Basilica di San Savino
Romanesque basilica in Piacenza with a Baroque façade of 1721, a crypt with zodiac mosaics and Saint Sabinus's relics.
5 places covered in Piacenza Grouped by type, most important first.
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Churches and places of worship
4Chiesa delle Benedettine
Deconsecrated Baroque church of 1681 built by the Farnese, with a double church for nuns and faithful and a great dome.
Chiesa di San Sisto
Renaissance church in Piacenza that kept Raphael's Sistine Madonna, with the tomb of Margaret of Austria.
Chiesa di Sant'Anna
Gothic parish church in Piacenza, once Servite, with windows by Trento Longaretti and a façade of 1925.
Squares, fountains and monuments
1Palazzo Farnese
Great Farnese palace of Piacenza designed by Vignola, home to the civic museums with the Etruscan liver and Botticelli.
More places of interest
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Teatro Municipale
The Teatro Municipale of Piacenza, at via Verdi 41, facing piazza Sant'Antonino and beside Palazzo Anguissola di Cimafava Rocca, is the city's main Neoclassical theatre, for opera, concerts, ballet and drama.
What to see
The building was built in Neoclassical style, but the rebuilding of the façade in 1830 softened its influence. The architect Alessandro Sanquirico, for years a stage designer at the Teatro alla Scala, altered the design left by Lotario Tomba and designed the façade with a double portico covered by a balustraded terrace, topped by an Ionic colonnade supporting the pediment, where the city's coat of arms is placed: to him is due the resemblance between the Piacenza theatre and the Milanese one. The fore-portico also had a functional aspect, since it allowed carriages to pass and let the public reach the theatre without getting wet in the rain. The elliptical interior is by Tomba and was decorated by a large team of artists, among them Andrea Guidotti, Paolo Bozzini, Antonio Borea, Luigi Labò and Domenico Menozzi; to Sanquirico and his pupils many other works are attributed, among them a «secondino» painted with images of a country fair.
In September 1803 a society of Piacenza nobles commissioned the Piacenza architect Lotario Tomba to design a theatre to replace the ducal theatre of the Cittadella, destroyed by a fire on 24 December 1798. A year later the new theatre was inaugurated with Zamori, ossia l'Eroe delle Indie, composed for the occasion by the Bavarian maestro Giovanni Simone Mayr. According to one source it is the oldest public opera house in Emilia.
Visiting
The theatre is in via Verdi, in Piacenza; the performance calendar and the possibilities of a visit should be checked on the official site (teatripiacenza.it), because the sources consulted do not give them.
Our editors' tip
Look at Sanquirico's façade with the double portico and the Ionic colonnade: the resemblance to the Teatro alla Scala is no accident, since its author was for years the stage designer of La Scala.
Tours & experiences in Piacenza
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Near Piacenza
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
