Chiesa di San Martino

San Martino is one of Este's oldest churches and a surviving example of its Romanesque-Gothic religious architecture. The building's leaning bell tower and medieval paintings distinguish it from the town's later Baroque churches.

Why it matters

The church is documented from the early eleventh century, though a local archival annotation attributes its foundation to the Lombards. It served as a parish church for centuries before that role passed to Santa Maria delle Grazie in 1771.

What to notice

The bell tower, about twenty-three metres high, has a pronounced lean documented since the fifteenth century. A Gothic inscription records rebuilding in 1293. The apse preserves a fourteenth-century Crucifixion fresco associated with the Giotto school, and the main chapel has an eighteenth-century marble altar flanked by two angels by Antonio Bonazza.

Context and history

The church was altered repeatedly. Its apse was enlarged in the early fourteenth century to incorporate the chapel of San Lorenzo. In the seventeenth century the central body was extended, the facade moved west and the interior divided into three naves. The parish transferred to the nearby church of Santa Maria delle Grazie on 1 June 1771. The Rota family's sixteenth-century altar is now represented in the Museo Nazionale Atestino by its statues of Saints Roch and Sebastian.