Basilica dei Santi Filippo e Giacomo
Church · Dolomites
Checked
Cortina d'Ampezzo's parish basilica, dedicated to the apostles Philip and James, was built 1769-1775 in Baroque style by architect Joseph Promperg, replacing two earlier churches on the site. Its bell tower, rebuilt over seven years after 1850, carries a clock by the Lacedelli brothers, bells cast by Johann Grassmayr and a gilded copper sphere from Agordo. Pope Benedict XVI raised it to minor basilica in 2011.
The ceiling frescoes are the work of Franz Anton Zeiler, painted in 1774-75: three scenes across the nave show the martyrdoms of the two patron saints and the Expulsion of the Merchants from the Temple, and he added Esther before Ahasuerus and the Judgment of Solomon on the presbytery walls, plus the fourteen Stations of the Cross. Johann Müssack the younger carved the main altar in 1773 around a 1679 altarpiece by Giuseppe Zanchi, the Madonna with Saints Philip and James. The presbytery vault's Trinity was added later, in 1859, by the local Ampezzo painter Giuseppe Ghedina. A restoration between 2007 and 2009, led by architect Gianluca Ghedini, returned the interior and facade to their original state.
What you see
The bell tower rises about 67 metres, still the tallest thing on Cortina's skyline.
baroque artbell towerchurch
parrocchiacortina.it ↗Google Maps ↗