The church of San Giacomo e San Vincenzo is a place of worship in Cremona, on via Palestro, on the continuation of what was once the extra moenia road: it is presumed that it once stood outside the city walls. It is subsidiary to the parish of Sant'Agata.
What to see
A church dedicated to Saint Vincent the martyr was built in 1120, starting from a settlement of missionaries that, according to the sources, already existed in the sixth century. The small church of San Giacomo, of 1310, was run by the Umiliati; when the order was suppressed it passed to the Barnabite fathers, who joined it to that of San Vincenzo in a single church, dedicated to Saints James and Vincent and consecrated on 17 September 1600 by Bishop Cesare Speciano. The rebuilding, by the architect Lorenzo Binago, dates from the end of the sixteenth century, and the façade was finished in 1629.
The façade passes from sixteenth-century formal elements to Baroque ones: two orders, the first marked by tall paired pilasters, the second by two pairs of smaller pilasters, with at the centre a serliana enhanced by slender columns with Corinthian capitals. The interior has three aisles, with seven stone columns with Ionic capitals. In the right aisle is the Annunciation altarpiece by Gervasio Gatti; in a Baroque retable the statue of Saint Benedict; in the presbytery the altarpiece by Francesco Boccaccino, Saint Joachim and the Angel, and frescoes of the Stories of the Virgin attributed to Malosso.
Visiting
The church is on via Palestro. The sources consulted give no opening hours or visiting arrangements: check with the parish of Sant'Agata.
Our editors' tip
The funerary monument of the Trecchi marquises, in Parian marble, of 1502, which belonged to San Vincenzo, is today in the church of Sant'Agata. The Barnabites had their seat here for over two centuries, until 1789; the former convent, damaged, was demolished from 1953 and rebuilt as a school building.
