Santa Maria Maggiore, Lomello

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Santa Maria Maggiore is a church in Lomello, Lombardy, Italy. It is an early Romanesque building known for having Italy’s oldest cross vaults. The oldest document about the basilica is a privilege from Pope Paschal II, dated 22 August 1107. Archaeologists think there were at least two churches on this site before the current one, with the earliest perhaps dating to the 5th–7th centuries near the Baptistery of San Giovanni ad Fontes. The church has a nave and two side aisles, plus a lower transept. The façade originally sat inside the city walls; later, the first three bays were abandoned and a new front was created by closing one interior arch with a wall. Inside, the nave arches are accompanied by side windows divided by two vertical bars. The pillars not carrying arches are extended by blind columns up to the clerestory. The arches between the nave and aisles rest on semicolumns that form the pillars. The side aisles are a 14th‑century reconstruction of the original ones. In 1944 a crypt, perhaps unfinished, was discovered. Next to the basilica is the Baptistery of San Giovanni ad Fontes, almost as old as the basilica.