Basilica di San Babila — Local services in Milan

San Babila is a Romanesque-style Roman Catholic church in Milan, region of Lombardy, Italy. It was once considered the third most important in the city after the Duomo and the Basilica di Sant'Ambrogio. It is dedicated to saint Babylas of Antioch.

At the beginning of the 5th century, Marolus, the bishop of Milan, brought from Antioch to Milan relics of saints Babylas of Antioch and Romanus of Caesarea. Marolus founded the Basilica Concilia Sanctorum or church of San Romano, which stood until the 19th century, a few meters south of the church of San Babila, on the site of a Roman temple dedicated to the Sun.

The church of San Babila was built on the same site in about 1095. In the 16th century, the church was extended with an additional construction at the front and a new baroque façade. The church still retains its original medieval fabric, although much was lost due to baroque and modern renovations.

The whole complex was renovated in the 19th century with the intent of restoring the appearance of the medieval basilica, and in the early 20th century, Paolo Cesa Bianchi designed the Neo-Romanesque façade that we now see.[citation needed]

Previous to 1927, the church had a Mannerist facade with pilasters and a protruding portal with columns and a roofline surmounted by spherical pinnacles with palm-leaves above. The bell tower is from 1920, and replaced the original tower which fell down in the 16th century. The column in front of the church dates to the 18th-century and has a lion atop, a symbol of the neighborhood.[citation needed]

The interior has a nave and two aisles; it ends in typical multilobular semicircular Romanesque apses. There are two side chapels that date from the late Renaissance. The right aisle has an image of the Madonna which is highly venerated by the...

Art historians have ascertained that the construction of the basilica, built near the then city walls, dates back to the second half of the 11th century. The building was erected on the vestiges of the Council of Sants, the primitive residence of the eastern missionary clergy, which arose. Over the centuries, the basilica of San Babila was the subject of various architectural modifications, such as the remaking of the facade in the Baroque era. In 1826 the very bad conditions suggested to some the plan to demolish it. In the last decades of the 1800s, the architect Paolo Cesa Bianchi carried out the restoration of the basilica, returning it to its original forms, with the addition of the neo-Romanesque facade. Interesting mosaics can be appreciated inside. Alessandro Manzoni was baptized in...

Gli storici dell'arte hanno accertato che la costruzione della basilica, sorta nei pressi delle allora mura della città, risale alla seconda metà del secolo XI. L'edificio fu eretto sulle vestigia del Concilio dei santi, primitiva residenza del clero missionario orientale, sorto. Nel corso dei secoli, la basilica di San Babila fu oggetto di svariate modifiche architettoniche, come il rifacimento della facciata in epoca barocca. Nel 1826 le pessime condizioni ne suggerirono ad alcuni il progetto di demolirla. Negli ultimi decenni del 1800 l'architetto Paolo Cesa Bianchi compì il restauro della basilica, riportandola alle forme originarie, con l'aggiunta della facciata neoromanica. All’interno si possono apprezzare interessanti mosaici. Oggi, dall’esterno, la Basilica sembra apparentemente confliggere con l’architettura circostante; in realtà, a mio parere, impreziosisce uno dei punti cruciali della città...