Duomo di Santa Maria Assunta

The church of Santa Maria Assunta closes the northern side of Piazza Walther with the most recognisable silhouette in Bolzano: a Gothic stone body crowned by a tall bell tower whose open spire is covered in painted ceramic tiles. Inside, the cathedral gathers eight centuries of art, from a Romanesque Madonna to a baroque marble altar.

Why it matters

The cathedral is co-cathedral of the Diocese of Bolzano-Bressanone and, in the city portal's judgement, the most important Gothic church in the region. It rises over an early Christian, early medieval and Romanesque predecessor consecrated in 1180, was reworked by Lombard builders and completed by Swabian ones at the end of the fourteenth century, and its 65-metre bell tower is the work of the Swabian architect Hans Lutz von Schussenried. Since the Diocese of Bolzano-Bressanone was created by Pope Paul VI on 6 August 1964, the church has carried cathedral rank for South Tyrol, and it remains the parish heart of the old town. Damaged in the Second World War and patiently repaired, it stands today as the symbol of the city it overlooks.

What to notice

On the north side hangs a crucifix of the Veronese school with a votive scene of a pilgrim struck by a falling bell, next to the little wine door — the Porticina del Vino, also called the Bride's Door — where wine was once sold under an ancient privilege. The west front holds a Romanesque portal guarded by lions, a rose window restored after wartime bombing, a bronze door by Defner and a fresco of the Madonna and Child attributed to Friedrich Pacher and dated 1475. The interior has three naves of equal height, a sandstone Gothic pulpit carved by Hans Lutz von Schussenried, the polychrome marble baroque altar of 1720 by Ranghieri and Allio of Verona, and a Crucifix from around 1420. The baroque Chapel of the Graces, built in 1745 and frescoed by Karl Henrici, houses the venerated Veronese-school Maria Lactans statue of about 1200.

Context and history

The site has been sacred ground for well over a thousand years: beneath the Gothic church lie the floors of an early Christian and medieval basilica, and the Romanesque building consecrated in 1180 is the direct predecessor of the Gothic church. Fourteenth-century reconstruction introduced the hall-church format common in the German-speaking Alpine world, with Swabian craftsmen finishing the work, and Schussenried's early sixteenth-century tower gave the city its landmark — its spire sheathed in glazed tiles that catch the mountain light. The Second World War left its mark: the rose window you see was restored after Allied bombing, part of the wider post-war repair of the church. When Pope Paul VI signed the bulls Quo aptius and Tridentinae Ecclesiae on 6 August 1964, the new Diocese of Bolzano-Bressanone came into being and the church entered the chapter of its history that gives it the name "Duomo" today. A memorial on the south parvis recalls Peter Mayr, commander of the Schützen, executed in 1810.