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Church of San Bernardino alle Ossa
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Show an other treasure of art and history in Milan:
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 Mostly represented styles: Baroque
The church of San Bernardino alle Ossa is little known, although in a position that makes it very visible, it being right next to Fontana Square (to which it addresses the back).
The façade on the other hand, is really unobtrusive, and very much resembles that of a regular house.
The church was built in 1269, next to a room intended to accommodate the bones from the hospital cemetery that about a century before had been built there.
The real church is of the first half of the eighteenth century, and has a circular octagonal planimetry. Note that the atrium of the present church practically coincides with the small church that was present before it.
The Ossuary
Continuing along a narrow corridor you arrive to the Ossuary, with a vault covered by frescos of the 1695 by Sebastiano Ricci (Triumph of souls in a flight of angels and in the spandrels of the vault, the glory of the four patron saints, St Mary the Virgin, St. Ambrose, St. Sebastian and St. Bernardine of Siena).
The interior walls of the building, with a square planimetry, are almost entirely covered with skulls and bones that were found in the ancient ossuary, together with those who were resurrected in cemeteries suppressed after the closure of the local hospital in 1652 fto which it had been aggregated almost two centuries earlier.
The Putridarium
Even more strange, but much less known, the crypt under the church, where the bodies of deceased brethren were put sitting on stone benches. These benches were provided with appropriate wells designed to drain the decomposition liquids, liquids which then converged on a well in the center of the crypt.
If you are interested in a guided tour of this monument send an email!
Categories: Churches / Religious buildings
via Carlo Giuseppe
Merlo, 4 - 20122 Milano |
Further pictures of the Church of San Bernardino alle Ossa in the section Photography |