Basilica of Santa Cristina site features

The complex at Bolsena is three buildings in one, and the façade shows the joins. The sanctuary's own account names the nuclei: the Grotta di Santa Cristina with its catacomb -- an underground basilichetta, a wide vestibule, the Cappella del Corpo di Cristo and the Cappella di San Michele; a medieval three-naved church on a Latin cross plan with a trussed roof; and the Cappella Nuova del Miracolo, built between the first two from 1693.

The façade

The central section, the front of the medieval church, is Florentine Renaissance work and the most important thing built at Bolsena at the end of the fifteenth century. It is shaped as a triumphal arch, with superimposed niches between paired pilasters -- a scheme that points back to a prototype probably worked out for the famous 1490 competition for the façade of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence, and adapted here by the Florentine sculptor brothers Francesco and Benedetto Buglioni. The lunette over the main portal shows the Virgin with her Son and the city's patrons, Christina and George, composed in the Tuscan Quattrocento manner. It lost its original polychromy in 1637. The façade replaced a slightly earlier one in bands of white and grey stone which, the sanctuary notes, the patrons certainly did not like.

To its left rises the bell tower, perhaps built across the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, whose upper cell still holds the great bell dedicated to Saint George, cast at the start of the fourteenth century. Then comes the front of the Cappella Nuova del Miracolo, designed at the end of the seventeenth century by Tommaso Mattei and only completed in 1863 by Virginio Vespignani. At the same time as the main façade, the front of the Oratory of San Leonardo was built and moved forward to line up with it, and Benedetto Buglioni made a second maiolica relief for its portal showing the titular saint between two disciplinati.

Inside the church

Three naves, a Latin cross plan, a trussed roof. The building has lost most of its original character -- architectural elements, sculpture and painting alike -- and is now bare, which the sanctuary attributes in large part to the radical restoration of 1925-1930: in pursuit of the original forms it destroyed all the late-Baroque superstructures, demolishing and rebuilding arbitrarily, and many elements of fundamental importance to the building's history were lost. Frescoes survive running from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century, and the high altar holds a polyptych of about 1450 by Sano di Pietro. Two chapels open off the right of the nave: the Santissimo Sacramento, with a tabernacle by Buglioni, and one dedicated to Saint Lucy, with fifteenth-century frescoes by Giovanni Andrea de Ferrari and a bust of the saint.

The catacomb

An old iron grille opens onto the oldest and most sacred part of the complex: the cemetery of Bolsena's first Christian community, used from the end of the third century to the first twenty years of the fifth. On the right, inside a monumental Renaissance enclosure, are the remains of the altar on which the Eucharistic Miracle took place in 1263.

A travertine balustrade and a double stair lead down, built at the end of the nineteenth century to monumentalise the area round the martyr's tomb, which was found in the summer of 1880 by an excavation campaign under Giovanni Battista de Rossi and Enrico Stevenson. Christina's remains were brought here and buried around the middle of the fourth century, among many already lying in the cemetery, and a small monumental memoria went up over the tomb at once; in the tenth century it was enlarged into the small underground basilica that stands now, the Grotta di Santa Cristina. The frescoes on its barrel vault are probably sixteenth-century; the Saint Peter in the apse basin is from the second half of the fifteenth; and the terracotta statue of Santa Cristina in the sleep of death is Benedetto Buglioni's, of the Della Robbia school, made between 1493 and 1497.

Below, in the modern crypt built after the tomb was found, stands a large sarcophagus of local stone with an acroterial cover, late imperial. Its back has a wide hole in it, left by ancient violations, and inside the hole a white marble Roman cinerary urn is visible, inscribed in abbreviations: HIC REQUIESCIT CORPUS BEATAE XRISTINAE MARTYRIS -- here rests the body of the blessed Christina, martyr. The urn held most of the small bones of a human body under fourteen years old, and a silver coin of King Berengar from the first half of the tenth century.

The altar of the Miracle

In the catacomb, on the right, inside a monumental Renaissance enclosure: the remains of the altar on which the host bled in 1263.

The Buglioni façade

A triumphal arch with superimposed niches between paired pilasters, built 1493-1495 and derived from a prototype probably devised for the 1490 Santa Maria del Fiore competition in Florence. The main lunette shows the Virgin and Child with Christina and George, the city's patrons. The polychromy that once enriched it was lost in 1637.

Santa Cristina in the sleep of death

Benedetto Buglioni's terracotta statue, of the Della Robbia school, made between 1493 and 1497, in the underground basilica over the tomb.

The sarcophagus, the hole and the urn

In the modern crypt: a late-imperial sarcophagus of local stone with an acroterial cover, holed at the back by ancient robbery, with a Roman white marble cinerary urn visible inside bearing the inscription HIC REQUIESCIT CORPUS BEATAE XRISTINAE MARTYRIS. What came out of it was most of the small bones of a body under fourteen, and a silver coin of King Berengar from the first half of the tenth century.

The Grotta di Santa Cristina

A memoria raised over the tomb in the fourth century and enlarged in the tenth into a small underground basilica. Barrel-vault frescoes probably of the sixteenth century, and a Saint Peter in the apse basin from the second half of the fifteenth.

The bell of San Giorgio

Cast at the beginning of the fourteenth century and still in the upper cell of the campanile, which was itself probably built across the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

The Sano di Pietro polyptych

About 1450, on the high altar of the medieval church.

The San Leonardo relief

Benedetto Buglioni's second maiolica relief at Bolsena, over the portal of the Oratory of San Leonardo: the titular saint between two disciplinati. The oratory's front was moved forward so it would line up with the new basilica façade.