San Francesco (Ravenna)
The Church of San Francesco on the Piazza S. Francesco in the northern Italian city of Ravenna is a three-aisled columned basilica. It is looked after by the Minorites to this day .
history
The construction of the original church building, which dates from the time of Bishop Neon, began shortly after the middle of the 5th century. It was completed around the turn of the 5th to the 6th century. The 32.90 meter high square campanile is dated to the 9th century. The basilica was dedicated to the apostles.
The church was rebuilt around the year 1000 and is now named after San Pier Maggiore, to whom it was consecrated. Since that time, the wall mosaics depicting St. Peter and St. Paul no longer exist.
The basilica got its current name in 1261, when Archbishop Fontana donated it to the Franciscan monastic order.
Renovations were carried out in the 17th and 18th centuries. From an art-historical point of view, the worst interventions took place in the 18th century, when people did not hesitate to chisel the original capitals of the columns and cover them with colored stucco. The current cladding of the capitals is made of alabaster plaster.
The burial place of Bishop Neon has been discovered under the floor of the presbytery. During the excavation work in 1879, the old choir section with the original mosaic floor was exposed, the level of which is more than 3.50 meters deep and thus below the groundwater level. Like all other ancient buildings in Ravenna, the original church building had sunk into the relatively soft subsoil over the centuries. The exposed vault of the choir, supported by columns, in which the groundwater stands, can be illuminated inside at the push of a button and then viewed from the outside through openings in the wall.
During the excavation work, a marble sarcophagus and valuable antique gold jewelry were found. The gold jewelry that was subsequently exhibited in the National Museum of Ravenna was stolen there along with the gold-decorated so-called 'Panzer Theodoric', which was found during excavations in the vicinity of Theodoric's tomb , and has since disappeared.
It is considered certain that the funeral ceremonies for Dante Alighieri took place in the Basilica of San Francesco , whose tomb is in the immediate vicinity.
In 2018, a life-size, emphatically realistic statue of the canonized Franciscan Father Maximilian Kolbe († 1941 in Auschwitz ) was placed in a side altar .
organ
The organ in the right aisle was built in 1970 by the organ building company Balbiani-Vegezzi Bossi (Milan). The instrument has 20 registers on two manuals and a pedal and can be played from a mobile console. The actions are electric.
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Individual evidence
Web links
Coordinates: 44 ° 24 ′ 57.3 " N , 12 ° 12 ′ 4.5" E