Italia Pavia 4 Basilica di San Michele Maggiore

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Pavia
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The Basilica of St. Michael Mayor is a
masterpiece of the Romanesque architecture in
Lombardy. It has a majestic nave and two aisles,
surmounted by the lantern. The façade is richly
decorated with sculptures, bas reliefs and
figures of animals, plant volute cornices and
green shoots. The present church was built on the
site of a previous Lombard church and was the
coronation place. In fact Frederich Barbarossa
was crowned here in 1155.
San Michele Maggiore
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BarbarossaMiniature from a manuscript from 1188,
Vatican Library
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The Basilica of San Michele Maggiore is one of
the most striking example of Lombard-Romanesque
style. It dates from the 11th and 12th
centuries. A first church devoted to St. Michael
Archangel was built on the location of the
Lombard Palace chapel (to this period belongs the
lower section of the bell tower), but it was
destroyed by a fire in 1004.
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The basilica was the seat of numerous important
events, including the coronations of Louis III
(900) and Frederick Barbarossa (1155), among the
others.
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The façade is decorated by numerous sandstone
sculptures, of religious or profane themes they
are however now much deteriorated. Bas reliefs in
horizontal bands portray human, animal and
fantastic figures
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Unlike other churches of Pavia, where the use of
brickwork prevailed, San Michele s almost
entirely covered with sandstone, which absorbs
light and always gives different reflexes,
although due to its malleability, it is easily
attacked by atmospheric agents that continue to
create problems to the decorations, now largely
illegible.
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Everywhere there are a lot of bas-relieves of men
and things, like scenes of deer hunting, scenes
of jobs, like smiths one, of fishing, of
domestic life, of fights between men and strange
monsters dragons, hippogriffs, horses, sirens,
eagles, sphinxes, lions, peacocks or cranes,
sneering devils and other monsters, everything
created by artists who perhaps came from Pavia
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In the late 8th century, the Franks invaded Italy
and deposed Desiderius, the last of the Lombard
kings. Charlemagne (724-814) had himself crowned
King of Lombardy in Pavia.
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In the 10th century, the Kingdom of Italy
eventually fell into the hands of Otto I, a
German elected as Holy Roman Emperor in 962.
Ottonian control of Italy did not last long.
Following the death of the German emperor Henry
II in 1024, the people of Pavia burnt the royal
palace, thus signaling an end to the Kingdom.
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The current construc-tion was begun in the late
10th century (crypt, choir and transept) and was
completed in 1155. The vaults of the nave,
originally with two grossly squared groin-vaulted
spans, were replaced in 1489 by Agostino da
Candia by four rectangular spans.
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Altar details
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Presentation Sanda Foisoreanu
2013
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