Basilica of Saint Abundius - Como, Italy

This guide to the Basilica of Saint Abundius in Lake Como traces why Pope Urban the Second detoured to an unfinished monastery church on the old Via Regina in 1095, weeks before he preached the sermon that launched the First Crusade. It follows the Benedictine monks who spent decades raising the basilica in Lombard stone over an earlier bishop's tomb, and the later hands who filled the apse with painted scenes from Christ's life beneath a ceiling once dusted with lapis lazuli. Stand under that vault and look up at the five long naves resting on granite columns thick enough to carry all that history.