Belluno Cathedral Site Features

The church is a Venetian Renaissance basilica: three aisles on columns, a clear and regular elevation, and a restrained handling that fits the Lombardo attribution.

The facade was never finished, and is bare brick -- a common enough fate, and one that leaves the building looking unresolved from the square.

The campanile is the reason to look up. Juvarra's design of 1732-43 rises in diminishing stages to an open belfry and a spire, and it has the confidence and the sense of silhouette that mark his work in Turin. It stands detached from the church.

Inside are altarpieces by Veneto painters of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, including work by Jacopo Bassano and by Andrea Schiavone.

Below the church is a crypt surviving from earlier building phases.

Juvarra’s bell tower

A major eighteenth-century architect working in a small mountain city. The tower is the best building in Belluno and is visible from everywhere in it.

The unfinished facade

Bare brick, and an honest record of a project that ran out of money.

The altarpieces

Veneto-school painting including Jacopo Bassano, in a church few visitors reach.

The setting

Facing the Palazzo dei Rettori across Piazza del Duomo, with the Dolomites visible beyond the rooftops.