Basilica of Sant'Ambrogio
— — the brick the city built itself around.
Not only on a wall.
“One of the oldest churches in Milan, raised by Saint Ambrose himself in the 380s on a Roman burial ground for early Christian martyrs. The present basilica is Lombard Romanesque, brick on brick, with a colonnaded atrium and two unmatched bell towers — the monks' tower stout and tenth-century, the canons' taller and twelfth. Inside, the golden altar of Master Vuolvinius dates to the ninth century and Ambrose still lies in the crypt beside the two martyrs his church was built to keep. The whole place is the colour of warm brick at low light.
Basilica of Sant'Ambrogio, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
The Basilica of Sant'Ambrogio stands in central Milan, in the Lombardy region of northern Italy, about a kilometre west of the duomo on Piazza Sant'Ambrogio. The church was founded between 379 and 386 by Ambrose, then bishop of Milan, on a cemetery of Christian martyrs and originally dedicated as the Basilica Martyrum. The current Lombard Romanesque structure, in red brick over a Latin cross plan, was largely rebuilt between the ninth and twelfth centuries, with the colonnaded atrium added under Abbot Gandolfo around 1099 and successive bell towers raised in the tenth and twelfth centuries.
Two bell towers flank the brick facade in deliberate asymmetry. The shorter southern campanile, the Tower of the Monks, dates to the ninth century. The taller northern campanile, the Tower of the Canons, was begun in 1129 and finished only in 1889. Inside, the ninth-century golden altar of Master Vuolvinius, commissioned by Archbishop Angilbert II around 835, is one of the great surviving works of Carolingian goldsmithing in Europe. Below the high altar, the crypt holds the remains of Ambrose, vested, between the two martyrs Gervasius and Protasius whose tombs his basilica was originally built to protect.
Sant'Ambrogio is an active parish and the second-most important church in Milan after the duomo. The basilica is open daily, with hours typically reduced on Sunday mornings for Mass, and most weekday afternoons offer the quietest visiting light. The Sant'Ambrogio stop on Metro Line 2 sits one block from the atrium. The Feast of Saint Ambrose falls each year on 7 December and traditionally opens the season at La Scala that evening. The Oh bej oh bej market spills around the basilica for several days in the run-up to the feast.