Basilica of San Magno, Legnano

The Basilica of Saint Magnus (Italian: Basilica di San Magno) is the principal church of the Italian town of Legnano, in the province of Milan. It is dedicated to the Saint Magnus, who was Archbishop of Milan from 518 to 530. The church was built from 1504 to 1513 in the Renaissance-style designed by Donato Bramante. The bell tower was added between the years 1752 and 1791. On 18 March 1950, Pope Pius XII named the Basilica of San Magno a minor basilica. The interior of the basilica church is adorned with numerous first-class examples of Lombard Renaissance artwork. Examples are Gian Giacomo Lampugnani's frescoes of the main vault, the remains of 16th-century paintings by Evangelista Luini, the frescoes of the main chapel by Bernardino Lanini, and the altarpiece by Giampietrino. The item of greatest significance, however, is a polyptych by Bernardino Luini that is widely considered by art historians to be his masterpiece.

Upon the site of the Basilica of San Magno once stood the Lombard Romanesque parish church of San Salvatore, whose construction has been traced to the 10th or 11th centuries AD. By the 15th century, the stability of the parish church's foundation had been drastically weakened by its age and water leaking in from the nearby Olonella. To make matters worse, the Olona was prone to frequent and destructive flooding. Finally, in the very late 15th century, the parish church partially collapsed. The people of Legnano obtained permission from Duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza, to demolish its remains and to build a new church on the same site. Because the parish church had had a rather dour appearance, Legnano's populace decided to erect a much more sumptuous place of worship. There are a few reasons that the people chose, in spite of the danger of continued water damage, to reuse the site of the parish church. One is a confidence displayed by the people of Legnano in the technical skills of the builders of the basilica church. Another is that what is now the Piazza San Magno was the town's primary cemetery until a fiat of the Napoleonic government forced the municipal government to move the cemetery out of the town in 1808. The nobility were laid to rest inside the church until their bones were removed from the Basilica of San Magno in the 18th century.

The greatest monetary contributions to the construction of the basilica church were made by the Lampugnani and Vismara families, two of the oldest families in Legnano. The cornerstone was laid on 4 May 1504 and construction was finished on 6 June 1513. The decoration of the basilica church's interior began shortly thereafter with the frescoes of Gian Giacomo Lampugnani on the main dome. The church received its first two bells in 1510. The next year, however, on 11 December 1511, Legnano was razed and sacked Swiss soldiers, then fighting for the Holy League of 1511 during the War of the League of Cambrai. The church was also damaged; the scaffolding on its exterior was incinerated. Writing about the construction of the basilica church, Agostino Pozzi, the provost of Legnano, reported in the Storia delle chiese di Legnano:

[...] The church of S. Magno, as can be seen from a travel guide by Alessandro Lampugnano, was begun in 1504 on 4 May, and was built to perfection in 1513. And this building would have been built to perfection in a much shorter time, had it not been for the calamity of war that this country suffered, in particular the land of Legnano, given that, falling in the street of Varese in the year 1511 on 10 December, with one side bleached and the rest sacked; it confirms the work of Alessandro Lampugnano, and conforms to what Guicciardino says in his story in the book X. [...]

Church data from Wikidata (CC0). Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).