Church
Metropolitan Cathedral of St Peter
Baroque cathedral rebuilt from scratch after a renovation collapsed its own vaults in 1599.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to the Metropolitan Cathedral of St Peter in Bologna opens with a puzzle: why its bell tower belongs to a different century than the church beside it. The story reaches back to 1575, when Cardinal Gabriele Paleotti set architects loose remodeling the old Romanesque cathedral into something grander, and to the vaults that gave way decades later. The diocese started over from bare ground in 1605, working for generations under a Bolognese pope's patronage. Stand back and compare the tower's weathered stone against the church's newer brick and marble.
This audio guide was created using AI.