Explore Religious Heritage Across Europe

The church of San Samuele was built around the year 1000 by the Boldù and Soranzo families. It was destroyed at the beginning of the 11th century by two fires and then rebuilt. It was rebuilt almost entirely in 1685. The portico of the façade, now closed, is topped by a loggia added in 1952. Despite the restructuring of the nave and façade in 1685, the late Gothic apse has remained intact.

The church of San Sebastiano was consecrated in 1633 for the Barnabite order. The church was designed by Giovanni Francesco Cantagallina. The last Barnabites left in 1867 and a few years later, in 1874, the church of San Sebastiano became a parish church.

The present church of San Sebastiano was begun in 1505 to a design by Antonio Abbondi, known as Lo Scarpagnino, completed in 1548 and consecrated in 1562. On the site where the church now stands, there was once a hospice founded by the friars of the congregation of San Girolamo around 1393. The new building has a classical façade but a Renaissance interior.

San Sepolcro is a Catholic church in Milan. The building, which dates back to the 12th century, has been deeply remodeled at different times. The current facade is the result of a reconstruction of 1894-1897.

The church of San Severino Abate, first mentioned in 1059, is the oldest sacred building in San Severo. It was originally a small primitive church located on the probable route of the variant of the Via Francigena, today called "Via Sacra Langobardorum". The original three-aisled Benedictine church with a gabled façade was transformed into a larger single-aisle temple in 1224. During the Renaissance, the church was enriched with altars and paintings, but the earthquake of 30 July 1627 caused severe damage to the building. The collapsed walls and roofs were rebuilt and completed around 1640, the bell tower, begun in 1651, was completed around 1730. In a state of advanced dilapidation in the 1960s, it closed. After forty-eight years of long periods of neglect and much-debated restoration work that partly compromised its artistic integrity, the church was finally reopened for worship on 27 April 2008.

The church of San Simeon Piccolo, built in the 9th century, was rebuilt in its present form in the 18th century and consecrated on 27 April 1738. It was an independent parish until the end of the 19th century when it became a branch of the parish church of San Simeon the Great. In 2006 it was assigned to the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter by Cardinal Scola. The portico was inspired by the Pantheon in Rome and its elegant dome by the church of Santa Maria della Salute in Longhena.

The San Sisto Church is an important church in the civic life of the city of Pisa in the Middle Ages. It was built in the eleventh century to celebrate the victories of the Republic of Pisa, hence its attribution to the former patron of the city, Sixte (Sisto).

The church of San Stae is first mentioned in the 12th century, but some people date its origin to the 9th or 10th century. At the end of the 17th century, the church, although restored several times, fell into disrepair and in 1681 the procurators of the sacristy had to take the decision to rebuild it. The legacy of the doge Alvise II Mocenigo (1700-1709), who died in 1709 and is buried in the church, is linked to this decision. He left 20,000 ducats for the construction of the façade.

The Church of St Theodore on the Palatine is an Orthodox place of worship built in the 6th century. The mosaic in the apse dates from the 6th century. Rebuilt under Pope Nicholas V (1447-1455), it was renovated two centuries later, in 1643, by Cardinal Francesco Barberini, and in 1703-05 under Pope Clement XI (1700-1721). It was then entrusted to the Society of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Pope John Paul II granted the use of the church to the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople and to the Greek Orthodox community in Rome.

The church of San Tomà or San Tommaso was erected in 917, renovated at the end of the 14th century, enlarged in 1508 and embellished with a marble façade in the second half of the 17th century. At the beginning of the 18th century, the church was in danger of collapsing; work on the foundations began in 1742. The last restoration was completed in 1803. In 1837 it was given to the conventual fathers who moved to a small convent nearby, where they remained until 1867.