Chiesa di San Bartolomeo

On a leafy bend of Corso Matteotti, framed by yews and cypresses, stands one of Faenza's oldest churches. San Bartolomeo preserves the disciplined Romanesque of the early thirteenth century, carries green ceramic dishes on its gables that echo the town's pottery, and since the interwar years has served as the memorial temple of Faenza's war dead.

Why it matters

San Bartolomeo is the best-preserved witness of a generation of Faentine Romanesque. Built when the commune's architectural style had settled into standardised forms, it belongs to a group of which only this church and San Lazzaro on the Via Emilia survive. Its foundation is fixed by an ancient inscription recording the year 1209, an unusual documentary precision for a medieval parish building. After the First World War the church was chosen for a civic role: restored, its crypt completed as an ossuary, and rededicated to the memory of the fallen — first under the banner of the Victory, then as the famedio holding the names of the dead of every conflict since.

What to notice

• The severe brick massing: exposed walls articulated by pilaster strips, a gabled facade with a double-arched portal beneath a mullioned window, and semicircular apse pierced by three narrow single lights.
• Diamond-patterned marble tesserae decorate the arches, and green ceramic bowls (bacini) set into the gables and bell tower reproduce medieval fragments conserved at the International Museum of Ceramics.
• The square bell tower crowned by four round-headed openings.
• Traces of fourteenth-century fresco on the triumphal arch and beside the pulpit.
• The memorial function: marble plaques with the names of the First World War dead, later joined by the fallen of the Second, and the crypt holding the soldiers buried here.
• The church stands among yews, cypresses and hollies, which contribute to its setting.

Context and history

The church dates to the early thirteenth century; the founding year of 1209 comes from an old inscription, recorded by Faentine chroniclers since the eighteenth century and now lost, which placed the work under Pope Innocent III and Otto of Brunswick. Restorations in 1569 mark its early modern history, and in 1810 the parish was suppressed, the building passing to the Gessi family and then to a confraternity that kept the cult alive until 1912. Declared a national monument in 1910, it was restored to its Romanesque forms, the crypt-ossuary completed, and in 1920 reconsecrated as a votive temple of the Victory. After the First World War the dedication to the fallen of all wars took hold, with the famedio role consolidated in the 1920s and 1930s; the post-war restorations that rebuilt the facade and other parts can still be read in the lighter, cleaner brickwork.