The Romanesque in Bonate Sotto

The Basilica of Santa Giulia is one of the little-known but most fascinating and mysterious places in the Bergamo area and one of the most significant Romanesque sites in Lombardy.

 

Everything is unique around Santa Giulia, from history to landscape to legend. There is the one that has it that here, on the banks of the Brembo, the remains of the Carthaginian saint had landed, but the most beloved one attributes the foundation of the church to Queen Teodolinda, thanks to the small cinerary urn, placed on a column, which claims to guard the remains of a twelve-year-old girl named Tiziana.

 

 

Teodolinda, visiting Bonate Sotto, on her death her young daughter decided to have her buried here, having the Basilica erected in her honor. In reality, the majestic Romanesque Basilica was founded in the twelfth century and is today the last memory of the ancient settlement, dating back to the Neolithic, mentioned by sources as "Castrum Lisina", razed to the ground around 1200.

 

 

Among the aspects that are still obscure is that of the fate of the construction: was the construction site completed and then destroyed, or was it never really completed? What is certain is that the great Basilica was already in ruins in the mid-fourteenth century and that it was left in abandonment for many centuries to come, until it was transformed into a cemetery area in the nineteenth century. All around, however, the vines from which the "Vernaccia" of Santa Giulia, an excellent white wine, was produced, leafed. And after the abandonment also the subtraction, since certainly the "stumps" that wove the walls of Santa Giulia were reused for the construction of other buildings in the area, such as the bell tower of the parish church.

 

 

What remains today evokes not only what must have been the grandiose architecture of the building but also the decorative elegance. Of the grandiose original structure (with three naves with semicircular apses and five bays) part of the perimeter wall, the three apses and the first bay remain. The architectural structure still exhibits majesty and elegance, with its buttresses and the external decoration of the apses, with brick arches on stone shelves and the typically Romanesque slate roof. Inside, on the other hand, the capitals animate a small gallery of zoomorphic, anthropomorphic, geometric and floral shapes.

 

 

The Basilica of Santa Giulia in Bonate Sotto (Bergamo), known as the legendary "Basilica of Theodolinda", has always been a Romanesque jewel. In 2018, the Basilica took flight on the wings of the ninth edition of "The Places of the Heart", the census of Italian places not to be forgotten promoted by FAI - Fondo per l'Ambiente Italiano ETS and Intesa Sanpaolo, ranking 13th in the national ranking and second in Lombardy. A goal achieved thanks to an articulated project, which saw culture become a "social engine", involving the whole community in support of the candidacy with the establishment of the "Santa Giulia La Basilica Committee". At the same time, a program of special initiatives between art, history, music and theater, promoted by the Municipality of Bonate Sotto, has revived Santa Giulia, starting its transformation into a place of aggregation and a stage of culture. Theatrical interventions, narratives, concerts and guided tours, even by night, led thousands of visitors among the stones of Santa Giulia.