Chiesa di Santa Maria Canale

via Giulia, 7 - 15057 Tortona (AL)
Tel. +39 (0131) 861.360
http://www.diocesitortona.it/
https://www.cittaecattedrali.it/it/bces/40-chiesa-di-santa-maria-canale-tortona

The Church of Santa Maria Canale is the only one in the city to have maintained an ancient Romanesque look, even if modified by numerous renovations. The facade is currently 'gabled’ with corner buttresses and two narrow pilaster strips next to the major portal, but if the wall fabric is analysed the original profile is clearly double sloping. In the lower part, the masonry is composed by large blocks of sandstone, then continues alternating brick and stone. Above the minor portals, surmounted by a lunette, there are two simple circular windows; the central portal presents a recess formed by pilasters and semi-columns ending in the capitals with stylised acanthus leaves or palmettes. Immediately above the central lunette a large ogival window in brick, probably from the 14th century, which replaces the original rose window, of which the round arch survives. Under the apex of the façade is a Greek-cross window, with four circular coloured ceramic basins at the end of the arms: these are ceramics of Byzantine production datable to the first half of the 12th century. The façade terminates with a frame in bricks arranged in a sawtooth pattern, rested on brick corbels with geometric motifs and heads. The interior has three naves, the lower terminating in semi-circular apses, the biggest in a chancel with a rectangular plan, which dates from 1564. The naves are formed by four bays, plus non-protruding transept, and presbytery. The roofing, originally trussed, was replaced in the 14th century by ribbed cross vaults; these rest on rectangular pilasters, with two half-columns leaning longitudinally, supported by stone plinths. The sandstone capitals of the pillars are different one from the other, decorated by stylised plant elements: an older group was dated approx. 1040, the other approx. 1165.