Cattedrale di San Giorgio
Stand in the piazza and read the front from the ground up. The lower façade is white marble, Romanesque, three cusps wide, layered with loggias, small arcades, rose windows, statues and bas-reliefs. At the centre a porch rests on two columns, each rising from an Atlas figure seated on a lion. Above the door the lunette shows Saint George killing the dragon; the lintel runs scenes from the Life of Christ.
The portal is the work of the sculptor Nicholaus, a pupil of Wiligelmus. The figures are frankly disproportioned, as Romanesque figures are, and the jambs carry the Annunciation and the four prophets who foretold the coming of Christ. An inscription, since destroyed, is said to have credited Nicholaus with the design of the original building itself. The two side portals on the west front are also his.
Work began in 1135, on the left bank of the Po di Volano, as the city pushed north. Guglielmo I Adelardi helped fund it, under a concession obtained in 1132 from the antipope Anacletus II. The main altar was consecrated on 8 May 1177 — forty-two years from first stone to a working east end, brisk for a medieval church of this size. The old cathedral outside the walls, San Giorgio fuori le mura, kept its dedication and became a parish church.
Then the styles pile up. Pointed arches arrive in the first gallery, which is not what Modena or Parma do. The loggia above the main door is mid-13th-century Gothic; the attic above it, the same date, already speaks Proto-Renaissance. On the south flank stands the bell tower in white and pink marble, built between 1451 and 1493 and never given its planned cusp. Biagio Rossetti designed the brick apse. Inside, an 18th-century fire cleared the slate, and the nave and two aisles were remade entirely in Baroque.
Stand in the piazza and read the front from the ground up. The lower façade is white marble, unmistakably Romanesque, three cusps wide, layered with loggias, small arcades, rose windows, statues and bas-reliefs. At the centre a porch rests on two columns, and each column rises from an Atlas figure seated on a lion. Above the door the lunette shows Saint George — patron of the city — killing the dragon. The lintel runs scenes from the Life of Christ.
That portal is the work of Nicholaus, a pupil of Wiligelmus. The figures are frankly disproportioned, as Romanesque figures are, and the jambs carry the Annunciation and the four prophets who foretold the coming of Christ. An inscription, since destroyed, is said to have credited Nicholaus not only with the sculpture but with the design of the original building. The two side portals on the west front are his as well. Above the porch sits a Last Judgement by a master nobody has named, and a loggia with a Madonna and Child added later, in Gothic.
The chronology is unusually legible. Construction began in 1135, on the left bank of the Po di Volano, as Ferrara expanded and its centre drifted north. Guglielmo I Adelardi contributed to the work under a concession obtained in 1132 from the antipope Anacletus II. The main altar was consecrated on 8 May 1177 — forty-two years from first stone to a functioning east end, quick for a medieval church of this scale. The previous cathedral, San Giorgio fuori le mura on the right bank, kept its dedication and stepped down to parish duty.
What makes the façade worth a slow look is the seam. Modena and Parma stayed Romanesque; here the Gothic arrives early, in the first gallery, where the triple openings sit under peaked arches. The loggia above the main entrance is mid-13th-century and Gothic without compromise; the attic above it is the same date but already Proto-Renaissance in form, and its reliefs are naturalistic, well proportioned, alive. The lower galleries hold both languages at once. In Italian Gothic, the round arch never entirely goes away.
The south side has lost more than it kept. A second portal by Nicholaus, with additions by Benedetto Antelami, stood there until the 18th-century restorations pulled it down. It was the door pilgrims used on the road to Rome. Some of its sculpture survives — the supporting griffins are out on the piazza, other pieces sit in the narthex and the Cathedral Museum. Along the same flank rises the bell tower in white and pink marble, built 1451 to 1493 and left without the cusp it was meant to have. The brick apse, with its arches and marble capitals, is by the Ferrarese architect Biagio Rossetti.
Inside, an 18th-century fire ended the medieval interior; the nave and two aisles were rebuilt in Baroque. What survives is the art. Niccolò Baroncelli's bronze Crucifixion. Guercino's Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence. In the side chapels, a Madonna Enthroned with Saints by Garofalo, a Coronation of the Virgin by Francesco Francia, and a Virgin in Glory with Saints Barbara and Catherine by Bastianino — who also painted the Last Judgement in the apse choir between 1577 and 1581.
The Cathedral Museum is across the square, in the shell of the former church of San Romano. It holds two Cosmè Tura panels, an Annunciation and a St George and the Dragon, the Madonna della melagrana by Jacopo della Quercia, and eight tapestries telling the lives of the city's two patron saints, woven from cartoons by Garofalo and Camillo Filippi.
The building has had a hard recent decade. It closed on 4 March 2019 for restoration and consolidation — chronic structural defects, compounded by damage from the 2012 Emilia earthquake — and stayed shut until 22 March 2024, reopening for worship on Palm Sunday. Pope John XXIII raised it to minor basilica in November 1959. In spring the four painted cloths that are the prize of the Palio di Ferrara are blessed here, which tells you what the cathedral still is: not a monument first, but the room where the city gathers.
