In 1665 this church was turned back to front. The apse was demolished and in its place they built the porticoed façade, which opened onto via Galliera; where the front had been, they put the chancel. A church that changes direction is a rare thing, and the reason was practical: the important street had become the other one, and the church had to look that way.
What to see
The church is very old: a papal bull of 1073 declares it to have existed already for centuries, and it stood inside a convent of Benedictine nuns. It was rebuilt at the end of the eleventh century, enlarged in the fifteenth and finally transformed in the seventeenth, when it received the barrel vaults and the baroque dress it still wears.
Inside are chapels remade in the eighteenth century by leading Bolognese architects and altars with altarpieces, along with fragments and works from the building's earlier phases. It is a church where a thousand years of alterations are visible one over another, and the portico on the street is the one the people of Bologna walk through every day without thinking about it.
Visiting
The church is in via Galliera, five minutes from piazza Maggiore towards the station; free entry, closed at midday and during services. Twenty minutes.
Our editors' tip
Go in and try to reconstruct how it was before: stand at the altar, look towards the door and imagine being turned a hundred and eighty degrees. The chancel where you stand was the façade, and people came in from behind your shoulders. It is a simple exercise and it changes the way you look at any altered church.