Explore Religious Heritage Across Europe

The cathedral of Lecce was first built in 1144, and a century later, in 1230, it was rebuilt in Romanesque style. In 1659, the Bishop of Lecce Luigi Pappacoda entrusted the local architect Giuseppe Zimbalo, known as Zingarello, with the task of rebuilding the cathedral church in the baroque style of Lecce. The construction was carried out between 1659 and 1670 and the architect chose not to modify the plan of the Romanesque cathedral.

The construction of this church began in 1277 and lasted until the 16th century. This building succeeds a first, older, pillaged and collapsed church. The revolution inflicted damage on the building, before its transformation of the cathedral into a temple of religion.

The Cathedral of Our Lady, built in 1352, is a cathedral in Antwerp. it was a cathedral between 1559 and 1803 (suppression of the diocese of Antwerp by Napoleon) and from 1961 to the present. The tower of the Cathedral of Our Lady is included on the UNESCO World Heritage List as part of a group of 56 belfries in Belgium and France.

The Cathedral of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour is a Roman Catholic cathedral in Prizren. The Cathedral was commissioned by Dario Bucciarelli, Archbishop of Skopje, in 1870.

The Cathedral of Parma was built from 1074 to 1178 on a previous church destroyed by fire in the 9th century. Mainly Romanesque on the outside, the interior of the cathedral underwent several interventions in Renaissance style. The Gothic bell tower was rebuilt by the Obizzo Sanvitale between 1284 and 1291.

The Cathedral of Pavia, founded in the 15th century, is an important Renaissance building, recognizable by its octagonal masonry dome, one of the largest in Italy. The construction of the cathedral began in 1488 on the site of the two pre-existing Romanesque cathedrals. The cathedral was not completed until the 1930s, with the construction in 1930-33 of the two arms of the transept, built according to the original 16th-century plans. A 78 m high bell tower (the Torre Civica) originally flanked the cathedral. Mentioned as early as 1330 and enlarged in 1583, it collapsed in 1989. Its remains are still visible on the left side of the cathedral.

The Cathedral of Pescara is a fairly recent building, built in the 1930s (1933-1938). Before it was built there was a seventeenth-century church, but it was in a bad state at the beginning of the twentieth century. Shortly after the completion of the new church, the Second World War broke out and the facade of the church was damaged as a result. Subsequently renovated, the church became a cathedral in 1949.

The Cathedral of Piacenza, built between 1122 and 1233, is an important example of Romanesque architecture in Italy. The bell tower is a later work, dating from the 14th century. The modifications made to the cathedral were destroyed during the restoration carried out between 1897 and 1902 by the Bishop of Piacenza Giovanni Battista Scalabrini (1839-1905).

The Cathedral of Pozzuoli is built on an ancient Greek temple rebuilt in Augustan times (27 BC - 14 AD). Between the end of the 5th and the beginning of the 6th century, the inhabitants of Puteoli decided to dedicate this building from the Augustan period as a church to their patron saint Proculus. In 1636, Bishop Martín de León y Cárdenas, in accordance with the diktats of the Counter-Reformation, undertook the reconstruction of the cathedral, which was completed in 1647. The cathedral contains splendid paintings by famous artists of the time, above all Artemisia Gentileschi, author of the three canvases San Gennaro nell'anfiteatro di Pozzuoli, Santi Procolo e Nicea, Adorazione dei Magi.

Split Cathedral was built in the early 4th century as part of the complex of the Roman palace of Diocletian in Split. The building, which was originally an imperial mausoleum, was not dedicated to the church until the 7th century. In the 11th century, a bell tower was added and in the 17th century, the cathedral was enlarged by the construction of an apse in the choir. Consecrated as a cathedral at the turn of the 7th century AD, it is considered to be the oldest Catholic cathedral in the world that remains in use in its original structure. As part of the Diocletian's Palace, it is a World Heritage Site.