The cathedral of Sant'Ambrogio, or duomo of Vigevano, is the city's main religious building and faces piazza Ducale.
What to see
It was begun in 1532 by the Duke of Milan Francesco II Sforza, after Pope Clement VII had proclaimed Vigevano a bishopric in 1530, to a design by Antonio da Lonate, and was consecrated in 1612. To build it the earlier fourteenth-century church was largely demolished, though its apse was saved, but the origins are older still: documents of 963 and 967 already speak of a basilica of Sant'Ambrogio in Vigevano. The grand concave Baroque façade was devised by Juan Caramuel y Lobkowitz, bishop of the city from 1673 to 1682: the axes of the cathedral and of the square differ, because the square was the scenic entrance to the castle and not to the cathedral, and the concave façade makes the cathedral symmetrical to the square, which from the entrance to the castle, that is of civil power, becomes the noble antechamber of the cathedral, that is of ecclesiastical power.
The three-aisled interior, decorated in the nineteenth century, has a vault frescoed by Francesco Gonin with the life of Saint Ambrose, in light colours and gilding. In the second chapel of the left aisle is the Biffignandi Polyptych by Bernardo Ferrari, six panels showing the Madonna and Child with angels, the Deposition and Saints Dominic, Francis, James the Greater and John. The panel of the Crucifixion with saints, signed and dated 1531, is by Cesare Magni, a follower of Leonardo, and was donated by Duke Francesco II Sforza. There are also the funerary monument of Galeazzo Pietra, first bishop of Vigevano from 1530 to 1552, and the pipe organ built in 1782 by the Serassi of Bergamo, in the right-hand choir loft of the presbytery.
Visiting
The cathedral is in piazza Ducale, in Vigevano. The sources consulted give no opening hours or visiting arrangements: check them.
Our editors' tip
The cathedral houses the Treasury Museum: its historic core is the gift made in 1534 by Duke Francesco II Sforza to the new diocese, and it includes more than a hundred precious objects, among them chalices, pyxes, illuminated missals, an ivory crosier and Flemish tapestries from Brussels of 1520.
