The chronological datings of 754 and 1284, referred to by the local historical sources for the start of building being recognised as unfounded, there are more correctly distinguished four phases in the development of the tower's construction: the first one, going back to the third decade of the 13th century, up to the third string-course cornice; a second phase in 1250-1267, up to the great cornice below the quadruple lancet window; a third, around 1284, as a coupling for the fourth phase, represented by the marble spire finished by 1309.
Apart from the derivation of the typical Lombardy Romanesque tradition, also well in evidence in a Cremonese version, in the bell tower of S. Agata, of the second half of the 12th century, the Torrazzo has been proposed as a "type" of architecture new to Lombardy, the tower-spire, which was developed between the end of the 1200s and the early 1300s.
Its inspirational source is the Lombardy, Romanesque dome covering and particular tower originating in Burgundy (end of the 12th century) in a harmonic fusion; implications to which there could be added an affinity between the Cremonese monuments and some towers of the Moorish-influenced Christian world.
The Torrazzo, too, like other examples in Lombardy, including the facade of the duomo of Cremona in the phase of the early 14th century, reflects a significant change in taste expressed mainly in the modulation of the walls, substantially pictorial rather than architectural. In this sense the animation of the walls in terms of chiaroscuro is obtained through incisions with wide ogival mullioned windows with two or three lights and by resorting to slender vertical profiles or to horizontal cornices; elements, moreover, liberally arranged and without stringent structural limitations, making use of the best qualified channels of Cremonese brickworking techniques, above all in relation to spectacular proportions (111 metres in height). The marble crown, characterised by exquisite decorative elements, complete in chromatic terms and in lighting technique with its shaft in double-walled brickwork, giving it a conspicuous ascensional emphasis, further underlined by the octagonal two-layered spire and by its vertically narrowing width.
The great astronomical clock constitutes the results of operations following the construction of the medioeval architectural structure: the exterior structure was originally painted by Paolo Scazzola in 1483 and was repainted many times by, among others, the painter G. Battista Natali in 1671, up to the present display dating back to 1974; the clock mechanism, however, is still the original, finished by Francesco Divizioli in 1583.
Below the planisphere there is the device of the Commune in marble, which can be attributed to the 18th century.

The working site for the present cathedral was opened at the beginning of the 12th century, i.e. at the time of the regrowth of the town and of great political, cultural and religious upheavals leading to the formation of new social equilibria. Started in 1107, as the foundation stone with the prophets Enoch and Elijah preserved in the canons' vestry testifies, the church was in an advanced state of completion when the earthquake of January 3, 1117 interrupted and largely destroyed the building: it presented supports in an alternating system and, according to the theories, six-segmented vaults or trussed coverings without transverse arches. It was not until 1129 that construction of the building could be restarted, and although it was probably completed in the years 1160-1170, it was subjected to additions and modifications up to the last years of the century: in any event, the solemn consecration of the altar dedicated to the cathedral's patron saints, S. Archelao and S. Imerio, by the Bishop of Cremona Sicardo took place in 1196.
Our picture of the duomo built after 1129 seems better defined: it must have been a church with a central nave and two aisles with matrons' galleries along the elevations of the walls, a crypt and a transept, this last at least partly constructed before the end of the same 12th century. The earthquake must have made it seem prudent to return to a system with transverse arches and a flat covering over the central nave. The architectural culture of the Romanesque phase of Cremona's cathedral, has suggested links with the duomo of Modena and, through connections with the cathedrals of Parma and Piacenza , recalls the Anglo-Norman and Rhenish architecture.
At the same 12th-century worksite there were sculptors of different languages and cultures at work. On one side there is distinguished a conspicuous nucleus of sculptures, distributed among the western and northern vestibules or lodged in the wall of the main facade, of controversial attribution, but whose high quality have all the same suggested a reference to the influence of Wiligelmo or, indeed, to the direct participation of Wiligelmo himself. This is so in the case of the highest work, among the most intriguing of the western Romanesque sculpture, composed of the commemorative slabs, with the Four Prophets, of the great door (Ezekiel, Daniel, Isaiah, Jeremiah), datable to the period between 1107 and 1117.
The search for Wiligelmo conducts mainly to the intensity of modulations and the odd volumes, the concentration and the bronze-like material, as well as the execution of the folds which define the form without destroying it. A different interpretive proposal sets the four sculptures in a vast network of relationships and assonances with cultural areas of the Teutonic world, in connection with German works of the first quarter of the 12th century, which find an analogous echo in the plastic art of Northern Italy, in examples such as the pulpit of S. Giulio d'Orta.
Among the works, again leading back to the context of Wiligelmo, there figure the architrave showing Christ and the twelve apostles now employed above the door of the north transept face; the two beautiful corbels (caryatids with Bearded man and siren, Moustached man with siren); the two episodes from Genesis of Modenese inspiration; the symbols of the Evangelists and the two prophets Enoch and Elijah on the foundation stone, for the stylistic affinity with The Prophets; lastly the various friezes (and fragments of friezes) of classicizing stamp, characterized by a branching strip in which there are inserted symbolic figures with the faces of beasts and humans. Different critical declarations have instead recognized in the "corpus" of the above mentioned sculptures the work of at least two masters operating in Cremona between 1107 and 1117, owing much to the influence of Wiligelm and to the master of the great door of the Principi, in Modena, but also to their knowledge of the rigorous geometry of the ancient Aquitanian forms.
Some sculptures (e.g. Christ and the twelve apostles and, inside the cathedral, the holy-water font beside the vestry), dating back to around 1130, tend to define the characteristics of a second Cremonese school, composed of craftsmen from Emilia and which, in some cases, clearly show the influence of Nicola. The so-called master of the Lunette, working between 1140 and 1150 on the capitals of the matron's gallery (Telamon and eagle, the Four caryatids...) shows affinity with the formal elements that can be recognized in works of transalpine and Teutonic origin.
There must already have existed in the first decade of the 12th century a second building parallel to the Romanesque duomo, probably with the function of a double cathedral: the theory is supported by the remains of the central apse and by the finds of the "Camposanto" mosaic.
This last-named mosaic offers interesting iconographic hints with references to the Psycomachia of Prudenzio, presenting, moreover, the allegorical figures of the Fides, which faces the Discordia (i.e. Heresis), the figures of the Crudelitas, of the Impietas, and of the Centaurus, a metaphor of bestiality; stylistic analogies with the lithostraths of the churches of Sorde and Lescar have suggested a dating in the second quarter of the 12th century.
The present facade was substantially elaborated between the beginning of the thirteenth century, by connection with the craftsmen of the school of Antelami, and the beginning of the fourteenth century: the late twelfth-century undertaking (erection of the vestibule arches or protiri of the northern head of the transept and of the facade, the construction of the rose window for the latter aspect) are to be attributed to the same architect and sculptor, Giacomo Porrata, commemorated in the slab dated 1274 related to the rose window.
The outer arched lintel of this rose window is decorated with bas-reliefs with a vine-leafed stem loaded with grapes, symbolizing the world; inside the recesses, created by the meanderings of the vegetation, there are inserted symbolic animals taken both from the figurative repertory of he Bestiari deriving from the Physiologus, and from the Christian symbology elaborated by the authors of the time of the early church, to be offered as a starting point for a moral interpretation. In this sense the iconography of the various decorative motifs, by means of images of good and evil in antithesis, suggests a Christian-centred and apocalyptic theme.
The abovementioned animal figures and the statuettes carved out of the blocks of the rose window's internal splay were made by Porrata and in his workshop give evidence, moreover, of two different stylistic tendencies: in some subjects the archaic stylistic abstraction, of a "Romanesque" character, still recaptures the attempts at liberation from more rigid and stereotyped models, while other sculptures affirm instead modes of a freer and livelier naturalistic stamp, showing us an artist familiar with the gothic vemacular.
During the same period, masters of the school of Campione carried out the refacing in marble of the main facade, the insertion within it of two rows of galleries, the elevation of the protiro (the lions are the work of Giambono da Bissone), the fabrication of the "protomes" (the enigmatic and solemn "petrified") carved in arched descent in the galleries running along the main facade, on the external sides of the side aisles, of the transepts and the apses. The new architectural layout of the cathedral was to be completed with the construction of the face of the northern arm of the transept (1288) and of that of the southern arm (1343): two prospects in which the local tradition of brickworking expresses values of genuine pictorial substance.
Other interesting sculptures were executed in the first decades of the 13th century, among them the frieze of the Months (1200·1210 or 1215-1230), located below the tribune of the protiro, and recently attributed to the so-called maestro dell'Arca di Abdon e Sennen, connected by reason of style and iconographic choices with models of the school of Antelami; interposed in the Months, the stele portraying the bishop Sicardo, in the face of the north transept, the solemn Madonna Annunciata, of frenchifying style.
The plastic heritage continued to be enriched again in the 14th century with works of remarkable level of quality. The three statues in the tribune of the western protiro, portraying the Madonna with Child. S. Omobono and S. Imerio were executed in the first years of the thirteen hundreds, by Marco Romano, in the time of the Cremona episcopate of Ranieri del Porrina: the three sculptures testify to the discovery of classical art through a knowledge of the monumental sculpture of the Nordic cathedrals, especially of the masters of Rheims and Bamberg.
The sarcophagus of Folchino Schizzi, inserted in the left-hand wall under the porch of the great facade, is a work bearing the name of Bonino da Campione (1357), where there is evidence of contacts between this artist and Giovanni di Balduccio and with the Lombardy trend, in the pre-Veronese stage of its production.
With regard to an early phase of the internal pictorial decoration, some more or less fragmentary traces witness here and there to operations of the 13th century; but paintings giving evidence of a unifying decorative project belong to the last decades of the following century or to the early years of the 1400s and are recognizable in the cycle with Stories from the Old Testament, carried out on the vaults of the smaller aisles of the northern and southern transepts.
The thirty-seven episodes, executed as frescoes in tempera on a white background of chalk, narrate the Stories of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and the Israelite Joseph, take up biblical passages contained in Genesis 16, 1-3 to Genesis 43, 26-31. In the pictorial decoration, formerly connected to the style of Giovannino de' Grassi, there has been seen the presence of a number of masters inspired to different stylistic orientations: the scenes with a more realistic stamp approach the culture of the "Tacuina Sanitatis" of Vienna and the miniatures of the "Theatrum Sanitatis'· of the Casanatense Library; other operations, from the impulse of the figures, go back to the "Tacuinum" of Paris and to the cycle of S. Maria dei Ghirli of Campione. Dated 1400 and bearing the name of France and Filippolo de'Veris. To update the internal architectural forms, in 1383 there were constructed the groined vaults whose quarters, together with the longitudinal walls, were painted with red stars on a white background: some of their remnants can be seen in the first span on the right, above the matron's gallery.
In the 15th century arose new concerns of a conservative and aesthetic nature, which reached its peak in 1491, when there was an unmistakably classicizing reforming of the main prospect.
Firstly Alberto da Carrara and later Pietro da Rho who, in 1498 brought the undertaking of raising the central part to completion, with the creation of an attic and of a gable: in the meantime, between 1493 and 1497, Lorenzo Trotti was entrusted with systematizing the portico, inspired directly by the school of Bramante, and the elevation of the upper loggia (/515-15241 known as "Bertazzola".
The panels (14821 depicting the Histories of the Holy martyrs Mario and Marta, Audiface and Abaco and inserted in the two pulpits designed and composed by Luigi Voghera (18201, as well as the basrelief with "S. Imerio dispensing alms" (between 1481 and 1484) are highly representative examples of the plastic art of the Renaissance: both the sculptured works were executed by Giovan Antonio Amadeo, showing, on the one hand, the illusionistic reliefs associated with Donatello and the typology of the human form inferred by Cristoforo Mantegazza, moreover, especially in the Elemosina, a more sensitive attention to the research into the use of light in constructing space and of the round wholeness of the figures, recalling an approach to Foppa.
The urn of the Saints Marcellino and Peter, largely sculpted by Benedetto Briosco (/506-1513) and placed in the crypt, and the Sarcofago Ala, executed by Gaspare Pedone (1513), now set in the wall of the main facade, on the right, are outstanding for their refined workmanship.
The canonical choir is a wooden complex of great importance, carved by Giovanni Maria da Piadena nicknamed il Platina (1482-1490). The great altar Cross in silver dates back to the same period, but refinished with gold and enamelled glass, signed in 1478 by Ambrogio Pozzi and by Agostino Sacchi, except for the base which was made by the silversmith Giuseppe Berselli from a design by the architect and painter Giovanni Manfredini, between 1774 and 1775: today the cross is displayed in the right-hand nave of the northern branch of the transept.
The iconographic complexity and the stylistic eclecticism of the imposing opera, suggest a composite range of relationships and references : broadly speaking northern late-gothic culture; in a more specific way the Venetian environment, the Lombardy statue style (Francesco Solari and Cristoforo Mantegazza), architectural typologies both real (the Duomo of Milan) and imagined (il Filarete), as far as the concordances with the cultural environment of the Cremonese miniatures, from Baldassare Coldiradi to Gerolamo da Cremona.
The cathedral's most important figurative cycle is composed of the frescoed decorations of the early 16th century on the side walls of the great nave which narrate in succession the Life of Mary and of Christ.
Different painters took turns in their execution: Boccaccio Boccaccino, who frescoed the panels of the Announcement to Joachim to the Circumcision and Jesus among the doctors, sensitive to different figurative experiences, from the Ferrara of Ercole de Roberti, to the Milan of il Bramantino, mindful of Giorgione's paintings and paying attention to the nordic world (the prints by Dürer); in 1506 this artist had painted the Redeemer and the Patron Saints of Cremona in the apse basin.
Gian Francesco Bembo (Epiphany and Presentation in the temple) and Altobello Melone (Flight into Egypt, Slaughter of the Innocents and the first four panels of the Story of the Passion starting with the Last Supper); these painters reacted to Boccaccino's classicism, giving rise to an eccentric and anticlassical language.
Gerolamo Romanino (from Jesus before Pilate to Ecce homo) who reaches one the highest levels of his output in the cathedral of Cremona, a synthesis of Titian-style chromatic impasto and Danubian imprint.
Giovanni Antonio da Pordenone frescoed the final panels of the Stories of the Passion and is also the author of the great Crucifixion (1521) and of the Deposition (1521)on the wall of the counterface showing himself to be truly "pictor modernus" and a decided representative in Cremona of the Roman Michaelangelesque style: this Pordenone executed the "Giorgione-style" Pala Schizzi (not later than 1523) on the first altar in the right-hand nave. Lastly Bernadino Gatti concluded the iconographic sequence with the scene of the Resurrection in 1529.
This cycle of frescoes from the early 1500s finds a response in the series of paintings executed in the second half of the century and representative of the character most typical of the local mannerism. These are still frescoes , but mainly of canvases distributed among the various altars, carrying the illustrious signatures of Antonio, Vincenzo, Giulio and Bernardino Campi (Antonio Campi: Christ entring Jerusalem (detail)), Bernardino Gatti, Luca Cattapane, G.B. Trotti (known as il Malosso) and Gervasio Gatti.
The following centuries also participated in enriching the cathedral up to our own days. It suffices to remember for the 17th century, the Histories of S. Rocco, painted by the Genovesino for the altar dedicated to the Saint in the north transept: in the canvases action and space are emotively united by means of a skilful resort to lighting techniques and to the effective contribution of the architectural context, referring to the Lombardy tradition and, in some passages, to shrill chromatic "Zurbaranesque" tones.
Beside the altar to S. Rocco, the Chapel of the Relics executed at the end of 18th century on a design by G. Manfredini. The four frescoes by G. Diotti on the walls of the presbytery and of the choir are from the first decades of the 19th century, while the sepulchral urn of Monsignor G. Bonomelli was created in marble and bronze by D. Trentacoste in 1923.

The first historical record of a building housing the political municipal power goes back to the end of the 12th century (1193 and 1194), when documentary references speak of the palace of the consuls. However, the readable remains of the medioeval elements of the Municipal palace go back to the date of building of 1206 and the subsequent enlarging of 1245, documented by a commemorative slab found in the courtyard (The Town Hall Palace - Facede viewed from the portal of the Cathedral).
Its present condition, however, enables us to recognise some characteristics that refer to the middle of the 13th century and at least to retrace, in its origin, the adoption of the module and the rectilinear layout of a simple plan and square form, of Cistercian derivation.
The medioeval structure of the palace remained substantially unaltered up to the 15th century, when operations of normal maintenance are documented together with the more important restructuring in the second half of the century.
Beginning in 1496, the more important modifications, entrusted to Bernardino de Lera, chiefly concerned the facade, proposing modules and elements of clearly Renaissance stamp to replace the medioeval three-lighted mullion windows: only four of the originally planned six windows were completed, outlined by marble pilaster strips sculpted in bas-relief with panels bearing mythological and allegorical subjects; only later (1507) Lorenzo Trotti constructed a marble balcony, inserted in the facade central pillar, to be used by orators, designed by De Lera.
The architectural reshaping, partially begun by De Lera and interrupted on account of the Italian historical and political climate between the end of the 15th and the early 16th centuries, recommenced in the decade 1568-1578 through the works of Francesco Dattaro, known as il Pizzafuoco (an epigraph commemorates the conclusion of the works in 1581).
These operations included the subdivision of the internal space into great meeting halls, in function of the new bureaucratic organization of the Spanish public administration: that of the Council of Decurions (the present Municipal Council chamber), a hall devoted to the Chancellery, to the Properties and Assessments, a chapel (the present-day Salon of Violins) and a gallery providing access (the so-called Hall of Paintings).
Then a great staircase was built on the side towards via Gonfalonieri and further modifications concerned all the windows in the facade reduced to a rectangular form, the marble pilaster strips which adorned the windows made by De Lera were reemployed for two portals still existing in the hall of the Halbardiers and in that of the Decurions.
The present-day arrangement of the facade is, however, the result of the alterations made to the original design (in 1838) by Luigi Voghera on behalf of the committee nominated by the municipality and responsible for the rebuilding after the architect's death (in 1840); in fact he had carried out the construction of the arches of the ground floor, while the decorative division of the upper level introduced significant variations, chiefly in the design of the openings, adorned with pilasters bearing decorations in terracotta with a Renaissance flavour.
Again other operations after 1840 and concerning the carcass of the interior and the exterior of the building, paid no attention to Voghera's tendencies: in this state of affairs the decision to build the new great staircase - still to be seen - replacing the previous sixteenth-century model, looks far from being arguable.
Ever since the Middle Ages the walls of the municipal palace had been enriched with interesting decorative finishings of a pictorial character: the wall paintings go back to the beginning of the 1300s, considerably damaged and fragmentary still visible under the portico, a precious and rare evidence of local northern-Italian paintings.
The iconography, of controversial definition, can be interpreted in different ways linked, however, to the town's history: it deals with the transfer of carts between Parma and Cremona (1281); or else with a delegation sent to Parma from Cremona bearing the statutes of Cremona (1288); or, lastly, of an episode featuring Ubertino Pallavicino (1251); one of Cremona's lords, as protagonist.
Inside the building, in the series of frescoes (late 13th century) on the west wall of the Hall of the Halberdiers, can be made out two different stylistic trends: a S. Cristoforo, a Madonna and Child with Saints and Saints Omobono and Imerio give evidence of a manner which, grafts stylistic features of Romanesque extraction onto the traditional byzantine schemes: the Crucifixion, on the contrary shows a more modern tendency, renewed by a more incisive descriptive mood and by a chromatic layout smoothly graduated. in accordance with tile cadences of a gothic-style matrix.
In the second half of the 1400s the vaults of the portals were decorated three times with floral and heraldic motifs, including the arms of Cremona, of the Sforzas and of Bianca Maria Visconti; the painted decorations depicting, among others, the emblems of the Lion of St Mark and the Serpent of the Viscontis below these vaults date from the following century.
On the walls of the portal facing the piazza, the three valuable lunette windows, with the Allegoria della Giustizia, Angelo annunciante and Madonna annunciata are attributed to the years 1506-1508, recalling the figurative Lombardy culture between Foppa and Bramante.
At the top of the great ceremonial staircase, on the upper floor, there is found the Renaissance-style portal recomposed, as previously mentioned, using the late fourteenth-century marble of the facade by Francesco Dattaro in 1575; the decorative and figurative details, in particular the Stories of Hercules, show the influence of Amadeo, together with obvious references to Cristoforo and Antonio Mantegazza, detected in the two allegorical figures of Justice and Temperance. The less cultured language concerning these models, have suggested that the doorway should be attributed to Pietro da Rho.
In the Council Chamber (or hall of the Paintings) there are to be remembered the paintings with the Harvest of the manna (1587) by Grazio Cossali: the Multiplying of the bread (1647) by the Genovesino remarkable work, where there can be seen emerging knowledge of the "bamboccianti" and references to picaresque literature where links with the Spanish naturalism are not wanting; a Last Supper (about 1647), again by the Genovesino; the Sacrifice of Isaac by Francesco Boccaccino (from about 1680 to after 1750). On the end wall, there is a reproduction in plaster of the portal of the Stanga-Rossi palace of San Secondo, whose original was sold to the Louvre in 1875; passing the door gives access to the Council chamber where there are conserved the canvases of the Justice of Solomon (1671) by Agostino Santagostino and an interesting *Allegory* by Christoph Schwarz (1545?. - 1592).
In the same chamber the eight round ceiling pictures, depicting the Virtues of the Good Governor and the four panels above the great windows, with celebrative episodes of The Glories of Cremona (school of the Campis: Musicians and lute-makers of Cremona; Cremona's illustrious men; Cremonese industry and agriculture), were all executed by the Cremonese painter Antonio Rizzi (1869-1940) between 1928 and 1929; appreciated for the refined and elegant design and confirming the stylistic mood, the paintings witness the progressive passage of the artist to the *deco* style, chiefly in adopting plastic forms, less angular in comparison with his previous output.
On the left as one enters the Council chamber, the elegant fireplace is to be admired, being a work executed in 1502 for the palace of Elisio Raimondi by Gaspare Pedone; an artist of a classical stamp, here in evidence in the type-forms of the ornamental motifs, richly set out, in keeping with a well-rooted tradition in the Lombardy culture sculpture of his time.
Next, the salon of the Violins holds some masterpieces of the Cremonese lute-making art: the violin known as "Il Cremonese 1715", made by Antonio Stradivari in 1715: the violin "L'Hammerle" by Nicolò Amati, from 1658; the violin "Il Carlo IX di Francia" by Andrea Amati, from 1566; the violin by Giuseppe Guarneri, called del Gesù, from 1734; the violin "Il Quarestani" by Giuseppe Guarneri, Andrea's son, from 1689; the violin "Lo Stauffer 1734" by Antonio and Gerolamo Amati, from 1615; the viol known as "La Stauffer" by Antonio and Gerolamo Amati, from 1615.

The baptistery, started in 1167, takes up the typical octagonal plan, a symbolic reference to the number eight, the eighth day of the resurrection and hence, by extension, of baptism: a connection between theology and architectural suggested in a solemn poem by S. Ambrogio and then linked to the Ambrosian rite.
Externally, those parts of the edifice built after 1167 can be read in the sides which present the wall-building technique in brickwork: smooth walls on whose surfaces there open up small windows with one or two lights defined by buttresses with acute arrisses, in three cases stressed by two slender semi-circular pilasters culminating in small sharply turning cubical capitals, and ending in a frieze of hanging bows.
From 1553 onwards the baptistery was the subject of adapting and modifying operations which however match up in an intelligent manner with the original medioeval structure. These concern the facing in marble (1553-1558) of the two north and north-west fronts, in line with the Renaissance period reform of the cathedral facade at the end of the 15th century, the terminal part, characterized by the loggia with small columns of a bundle in brickwork embellished by double "post-Bramantesque" eyeholes on each side: lastly they included the construction of a new covering which duplicated the medioeval original, but raising and separating the wooden roof, covered by sheets of copper externally, from the upper curved surface of the vault. (Baptistery: view from north, view from south-west).
The different works undertaken saw as protagonists the "magistri" Gabriele Dattaro, Francesco Dattaro and Sebastiano Nani who were entrusted by the *massari della Fabbrica della cattedrale* with the renewal of the flooring, concluded at the end of 1561. Meanwhile, within the edifice in 1531 Lorenzo Trotti had already completed the complex group of the baptismal font, which can still be seen today.
The Renaissance-style and manneristic "reinterpretation" with medioeval connotations also involved the present entrance, enriched in 1588 by the protiro of Romanesque style, with a barrel vault and columns resting on lions, created by Angelo Nani with the assistance of Pietro Capra.
The interior of the baptistery gives a better testimony to medioeval architectural framework: while conserving undoubted "Romanesque" requisites, it presents "gothic" precursors, already evident in the partiality for bare and distinct curtain walls. In this sense the Cremonese monument expresses in an exemplary fashion the authentic contribution of lombardy gothic architecture ordered to the procedure for the chromatic dematerialization of the wall which becomes a subtle and ductile screen.
In this context there is marked the consistency of a system based on two different, but coordinated, wall shells completely separated by a compensating cavity; a device that prepares for the erection of the eightsegmented dome and concludes in the barrel-vault structure employed in the space between the dome itself and the pyramidal upper surface of the vault.
This is a covering system which brings into execution technical and formal aspects of which there have been numerous examples in Lombardy (among others the tiburio or dome-covering of S. Michele in Pavia) at least since the beginning of the 11th century.
An analysis of the foundation measurements and the dimensions of the modules governing the relationship between base and elevation offers several clues: the measurements of the octagon, such as the side and the radius of the relative circumference, turn out to be used again for the height of the individual orders; the dimension of the square containing the octagon is equivalent to the summit of the external prospects.
Thus there seems to be found in the design and in the structural passages developed in the Cremonese baptistery the participation of the Cistercian aesthetics in their most exquisite and rigorously formal character, in consideration of the layouts in plan and elevation which compose regular geometrical figures.
This aspect is further confirmed by elements of decorative detail relating to the form of the featureless capitals, to multilobate leaves, analagous to those in the town churches of S. Michele and S. Lorenzo, then in the case of the capitals at the summits of the small columns of the mullioned windows of the galleries, there is found again a form entirely determined by four leaves enveloping the campana, rising to just below a rectilinear abacus, a constant feature of Cistercian architectural sculpture, starting from the prototype of the Fontenay Abbey (1137-1147).
Among the internal furnishings, on the south wall there is placed the altar of S.Giovanni, adorned with a crucifix previously dated to the 16th century, but recently related to the 1300s: behind it a damaged fresco with Mary Magdalene and the pious women at the feet of Jesus on the cross and, among the clouds, God the creator, variously attributed to painters working in Cremona between the end of the 17th and the middle of the 18th centuries (R. De Longe, A, Massarotti, F: Boccaccino).
The rich wooden altarpiece and the statue of Our Lady of Sorrows of the altar on the east side, have recalled the style of Giacomo Bertesi: there are two more wooden statues to be noted, S. Filippo Neri and S. Giovanni Battista, as well as the baroque choir stalls, attributed to Giuseppe Chiari, a pupil of Bertesi.
Inside the building there are placed the mosaic fragments from the courtyard of the Torrazzo, datable to the second half of the 4th century; these are outstanding for the elegance of the compositional design, characterized by a series of octagons linked to squares by two ribbons in a plait and enriched with decorative motifs, including black ivy leaves, rosebuds, peltate leaves and Solomon's seals.
The two bronze doorknockers with leonine protomes from the early 12th century (now in the bishop's palace) are original decorative complements of the baptistery that can be included in the area of northern Italian metal production in which are found formal references to the tradition of the Meuse region.
In the same context, the original statue of the Archangel Gabriel, previously on the summit of the baptistery and now replaced by a copy, is a work in bronze, probably by a Lombard master, which is to be dated between the 12th and 13th centuries. Externally, above one of the two bevelled buttresses, there is clamped a commendable head, now very eroded, that can be dated back to the times of Wiligelmo or Nicola.

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ESTE * * *
Viale Po, 131
0372/32220 - 0372/458188
IBIS * * *
Via Mantova
0372/452222 - 0372/452700
LA LOCANDA * * *
Via Pallavicino, 4
0372/457835 - 0372/457834

ESPERIA * *
Via Novati, 56
0372/452993 - 0372/452993
VISCONTI * *
Via Giuseppina,145
0372/431891 - 0372/449420

GIARDINO DI GIADA *
Via Brescia,7
0372/434615 - 0372/434615
SERVIZI PER L'ACCOGLIENZA *
Via S.A.del Fuoco,11
0372/21562 - 0372/21562
TOURING *
Via Palestro,3
0372/36976

Parco al Po'
Via Lungo Po Europa
0372/21268 - 0372/27137