Belluno cathedral, the cathedral basilica of San Martino, is the mother church of the diocese of Belluno-Feltre, in piazza Duomo, in the historic centre. The first record of a sacred building dates from 547, when Bishop Felice dedicated the early Christian cathedral to St Martin of Tours; as early as 1191 a bell tower with four bells is documented, which also served to call the citizens to arms. The medieval church had its apse towards the square and its façade towards the Piave. In 1471 a fire destroyed part of it, and from 1517 the new cathedral was built to a design by the Venetian Tullio Lombardo, who turned it round: façade on the square, apse on the slope going down to the river. The earthquake of 1873 brought down the dome and broke through the floor of the choir; the rebuilding, entrusted to Giuseppe Segusini, ended in 1878. Another earthquake, in 1936, made further consolidation necessary. It has been a minor basilica since 1980.
What to see
The façade was left unfinished: bare stone, divided into three parts, with a rich Baroque portal surmounted by the arms of Bishop Luigi Lollino, two Gothic windows and a rose window. The bronze doors, of 1983, are by the sculptor Angelo Canevari: the central one is devoted to the story of Albino Luciani, the pope from Belluno. The bell tower was begun in 1732 to a design by Filippo Juvarra and finished in 1743, with a copper-clad spire and at the top the great angel designed by Andrea Brustolon.
The interior has Renaissance lines, but the upward thrust of the massive piers in Castellavazzo stone is that of Gothic churches. There are a nave and two aisles, of seven bays, under a barrel vault; the dome has eight windows that light the choir, with its double row of wooden stalls. In the apse is the monumental seventeenth-century high altar, of white marble, with the altarpiece by Pietro Muttoni of 1672: the glorification of St Martin, with St Francis of Assisi and St Blaise.
Visiting
Opening times and times of services should be checked with the cathedral parish or the diocese.
Our editors' tip
Juvarra did not design the bell tower on the spot. He was a friend of Bishop Gaetano Zuanelli, who sent him an accurate description of the town and the cathedral: the architect replied with a revised and improved model of the bell tower of Turin cathedral. The work stopped for lack of money and resumed years later.
