Chiesa di Santa Maria Maggiore

Known in Treviso as the Madona Granda, Santa Maria Maggiore is a Gothic brick church and an ancient Marian shrine. Its history is closely tied to a venerated image of the Madonna and to the community's efforts to preserve it during the wars of the early sixteenth century.

Why it matters

Tradition associates the shrine with the early Christian history of Treviso, while the present church took shape from the late fifteenth century. The Lateran Canons began its reconstruction in 1473. In 1509, a partial demolition ordered for the city's defences stopped when the work reached the Madonna fresco. The church was badly damaged by bombing in 1945 and rebuilt after the war. It holds the title of minor basilica.

What to notice

The brick façade follows the Venetian Gothic style, with three portals, rose windows and five small Istrian-stone tabernacles crowned by trilobed arches. Inside, the church has three aisles. Near the apse is the fourteenth-century Madonna and Child attributed to Tomaso da Modena, the image associated with the 1509 episode. A cantoria from the demolished church of Santa Fosca survives beside the transept. The bell tower began as a defensive structure and retains its comparatively modest height.

Context and history

The earliest documented church may have been destroyed in the Hungarian raid of 899 and rebuilt in the eleventh century. The Late Gothic reconstruction began in 1473 and continued into the sixteenth century. In 1516 the Venetian Senate granted an old war tower to the church for use as its campanile. The air raid of 13 March 1945 destroyed the central nave and much of the façade; postwar rebuilding restored the church's Gothic appearance. Saint Jerome Emiliani is associated with the church through the tradition of his conversion here.