Basilica of San Francesco

---

Basilica di San Francesco (Basilica of Saint Francis)
Piazza Malpighi
Bologna, June 2015

“The architect is not known. Early sources gave Friar Mateo of Brescia as having designed the church. This seems to have been a confusion with Giovanni of Brescia, a leading architect of the period. The 14th-century chronicler of the friary, Bartolomeo of Pugliole, recorded that, when the vault of the apse collapsed in 1254, the restoration work was supervised by one Friar Andrea Maestro della Ghiexia, who is described as ‘of the twisted legs’. Despite its Romanesque facade, it is one of the best example of French Gothic architecture in Italy. This is manifest in the interior, which has a nave and two aisles, in the apse with corridor, in the high vaults divided into six sections (like in Notre-Dame de Paris) with ogival arches, and in the use of buttresses.” (Basilica of San Francesco, Wikipedia)