Basilica di San Domenico

San Domenico has a severe Gothic exterior and a richly layered interior. Its most striking feature is the stained-glass window of 1411, which rises high above the apse; the basilica also holds the tomb of Pope Benedict XI, who died in Perugia in 1304.

Why it matters

The Dominicans arrived in Perugia around 1230 and built a first church between 1231 and 1260, on the site of the present great cloister. In 1304 they began a larger basilica, with the support of Pope Benedict XI, a Dominican who died in Perugia that year. Tradition attributes the design to Giovanni Pisano, though the regional portal considers the Dominican friars themselves more likely authors. Pope Pius II consecrated the church in 1459. After the naves collapsed in 1614–1615, it was rebuilt to Carlo Maderno's design of 1629–1632. The present church combines a Gothic shell with a Baroque interior, built over the earlier parish of Santo Stefano del Castellare.

What to notice

The apse window, dated 1411, is signed by the Perugian Bartolomeo di Pietro and the Florentine Mariotto di Nardo. Rising 23 metres, it is described as the largest window of its era after that of Milan Cathedral. The campanile was begun in the fifteenth century by Gasparino Antonimi; its pyramidal spire was cut down in the sixteenth century for structural reasons. In the chapel of Benedict XI stands the pope's fourteenth-century funerary monument, recently attributed to Lorenzo Maitani. Beside the sacristy, a small museum of the pontiff's vestments opened in 2019. The San Lorenzo chapel contains Agostino di Duccio's stone and terracotta dossale of 1459, alongside votive frescoes attributed to Cola Petruccioli.

Context and history

The church once held an important collection of Umbrian art, including panels by Duccio and Gentile da Fabriano, Beato Angelico's Guidalotti Polyptych and works by Bonfigli and Giannicola di Paolo. The works were dispersed after the nave collapse and during the Napoleonic suppressions. The Guidalotti Polyptych is now in the Galleria Nazionale dell'Umbria. The convent beside the church has housed the National Archaeological Museum of Umbria since 1948; its collections range from prehistory through the Umbrians and Etruscans to the Roman period. The complex also includes two cloisters, the larger of which preserves traces of the first Dominican church.