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Reviews Santuario Di San Luca
Santuario Di San Luca
Traditional place of worship for the presence of an image the Virgin of St.
Luca as well as reassuring visual landmark for Bolognese approaching town, the
shrine located on top of Guardia hill is one of Bologna's symbol.
The 666 vaults
of the arcade - unique for his length covering almost four kilometres (3,796
m) - link the shrine with the town and provide a shelter for the procession
which every year since 1433 has brought the Byzantine Madonna with Child to
the cathedral downtown during the Ascension week.
Construction started in 1674
with the building of the Bonaccorsi archway by G. G. Monti over Saragozza Gateway.
The same architect was also assigned the designing of the final project for
the layout of the arcade at the foot of the hill, with extremely sober and simple
style, later followed by his successor C.F. Dotti, starting from the second
decade of the 18th century.
The end part of the arcade on top of the hill, designed
by the latter, is instead characterised by a dynamic variation of perspectives
and vanishing points up to the final view of the shrine. The start of the climb
is marked by the Meloncello Archway along via Saragozza, designed by Dotti with
the likely contribution of the stage designer Francesco Bibiena. The aedicule
with its curved plan and the recourse to the free column represents, together
with the open area outside the basilica, the only outdoor example of Baroque
in town.
Today's church was built by Dotti between 1723 and 1757 in place of
an earlier 15th-century church, while the two outside tribunes were brought
to completion by his son Giovanni Giacomo in 1774. The outside structure fully
in tune with the Bolognese tradition, is devoid of emphatic and solemn decorations,
displaying the characteristically simple curve profile supporting the dome.
The indoor structure with an elliptic plan opens up in a Greek cross ending
with the main altar standing before the chapel of the Virgin. Decorations are
made by V. Bigari for frescoes, A. Borelli and G. Calegari for stuccoes and
A. Piò for the statues. Of the artists decorating the church the most
important are G. Reni (third altar on the right), D. Creti (second chapel on
the right), G. Mazza (chapel of S. Antonio da Padova), Guercino (high sacristy).In
1930 Ferruccio Gasparri made a cable-way which, with a single pylon, by-passed
a slope of 220 metres between via Saragozza and the shrine. The controversy
around the cancellation of the devotional course terminated with the final closure
of the cable-way.
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