The Basilica of Saint Lawrence (Italian: Chiesa di San Lorenzo Maggiore) is a church in Milan, northern Italy, dedicated to the Christian martyr St. Lawrence.
Various suggestions of its origin have been made, including a foundation in c.370., the Basilica of San Lorenzo was renovated and redecorated in the 16th century. It has however maintained the original Byzantine structure, with a dome and four towers resembling those of Constantinople's Hagia Sofia. A recent detailed stratiographic study of the walls identified five phases of construction in antiquity from Theodosius I to the early Lombard period.
The church is a quatrefoil central-plan building, with a double-shell layout, consisting of an open central area (the inner shell) surrounded by an ambulatory (the outer shell). The quatrefoil design is expressed in four exedrae (semicircular recesses) of two stories, with five arches per exedra. As usual for the period, the interior had a matroneum (balcony for female worshippers), now partially disappeared. Also the polychrome interior decoration is now missing. The dome was also rebuilt in Baroque style after the original had crumbled down.
Other chapels were added to the
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