The monumental complex

In a letter to his sister Marcellina dated 386, Ambrose wrote of the extraordinary discovery of the remains of the martyrs Protasius and Gervasius, which he had moved to the new Basilica of the Martyrs, called the Ambrosian Basilica by the Milanese (ep. 77.2), his own chosen burial place.

Although it still preserves its basilica plan with a nave and two aisles, the current appearance of the church dates to the Romanesque reconstruction between the late eleventh century and first half of the twelfth. Preceded by a monumental four-sided portico (the ‘Atrium of Anspertus’), the sloped (‘gabled’) facade is marked by two orders of arcades, decorated with Lombard bands and flanked by two bell towers: one for the monks (ninth-tenth century) and one for the canons (twelfth century).

The nave is twice the width of the aisles and divided into four square bays, three covered with ribbed cross vaults and one beneath the dome lantern. The vaults are supported by large bundle pillars, above which there is a vast women’s gallery. The interior of the Basilica is decorated with masterpieces that attest to the centuries-long history of Ambrose’s church as the centre of Milan’s civil and religious identity. Built in a distinctive red brick, the Basilica of Sant’Ambrogio is considered a model exemplar of Lombard Romanesque architecture.

The chapel inside the cloister of the canons was known in the Middle Ages as the chapel of Santa Maria Greca (possibly a corruption of the Latin Sanctae Mariae faventis aegris, or ‘St Mary, who helps the sick’). At the end of the eleventh century, it was granted by the archbishops Arnulf III and Anselm IV to the canons as a place of prayer and for the celebration of the divine office. Partially rebuilt in 1478, it was dedicated to Sigismund, king of the Burgundians, who died in the sixth century and was venerated as a martyr. The chapel was fully restored by the architect Ferdinando Reggiori in 1938/40.

The oratory next to the bell tower of the canons was built in 1477 by Guiniforte Solari for the wealthy confraternity of Santa Maria della Passione as a place of prayer and centre of spiritual life for the ‘scholars’, or member confrères. After the suppression of the brotherhood, it was ceded to the Basilica of Sant’Ambrogio in 1812, but subsequent changes in ownership stripped it of most of the exquisite frescoes, attributed to the school of Bernardino Luini (c. 1481–1532), that had covered the whole chapel.

The small oratory dedicated to Augustine that opens onto what is now Via Lanzone is first documented in the eleventh century. But it was not until after the fourteenth century that it came to be mistakenly believed to have been the place where Ambrose baptised the future bishop of Hippo. It was entirely renovated in 1670 along with the buildings facing onto the access road to the monastery (called the ‘Strettone di Sant’Agostino’), which is the reason for its current Baroque appearance.

Built on the property of the noblewoman Floriana Crivelli at the end of the thirteenth century, the church and monastery (the latter no longer extant) of Santa Maria di Cantalupo were home to a community of Humiliati nuns who later adopted the rule of the Franciscan Clarists. The church, an elegant example of late-Gothic architecture and decorated with exquisite frescoes, was dedicated to St Bernardine (died 1444) in memory of the famous Sienese preacher’s visits to Milan.

In 1259, the church, first dedicated to St Nicholas and then St Expeditus, was documented as one of the parish churches of Porta Vercellina. In 1659, it was entirely rebuilt in the Baroque style after the discovery of what was believed to be a miraculous imagine of the Virgin Mary. It still preserves a fourteenth-century marble statue of the Virgin of Mercy, which was installed in the church by Azzone Visconti, lord of Milan (1302–1339) to protect the Porta Vercellina, one of Milan’s main city gates.