Basilica of San Simpliciano

This guide to the Basilica of San Simpliciano in Milan opens in May 1176, as an oxen-drawn war wagon sets out from this doorway toward a battle against Frederick Barbarossa's army near Legnano, and the legend of what the city believed followed it into the field. It traces the basilica back further still, to Ambrose, the bishop who shaped Christian Milan and began the church in the 1390s as a shrine to the Virgin, and to his successor Simplicianus, who finished it and gave it his name. Look for the martyrs' relics beneath the floor near the apse as you walk in.