Basilica of Sant’Ambrogio, Milan

Sant’Ambrogio is one of Milan’s oldest churches and, for many, its most beautiful: a red-brick Romanesque basilica behind an arcaded atrium, founded in the 4th century by St Ambrose, who is buried in it. Inside are a golden altar of the 9th century, the oldest portrait of Ambrose in mosaic, and the quiet that the Duomo lacks. The church is free.

Ambrose’s church

Ambrose, the Roman governor who became bishop of Milan in 374, began this church in 379 in a cemetery outside the city walls. In 386 he found the bodies of two martyrs, Gervasius and Protasius, and laid them under its altar; when he died in 397 he was buried beside them. It was known at first as the Basilica of the Martyrs.

The church was served both by a Benedictine monastery, founded beside it in 784, and by a chapter of canons, and the two quarrelled for centuries, which is why the church has two bell towers: the monks’ tower, of the 9th century, and the taller canons’ tower, begun in 1128. The church itself was rebuilt in the Romanesque style in the late 11th and early 12th centuries, and became the model for churches all over Lombardy. In August 1943 Allied bombs brought down the apse; it was carefully rebuilt after the war.

The visitor’s cheat sheet

What to see

The atrium and the front

You enter through a long arcaded courtyard, named after Archbishop Ansperto (868–881), traditionally credited with the first one; the present arcades are Romanesque, with carved capitals of beasts and monsters. At the far end the front of the church rises in two tiers of brick arches between the two towers.

The nave and the golden altar

Inside, the nave is dim and broad under brick rib vaults. On a column on the left stands a bronze serpent, said to have been sent from Constantinople in 1007, which legend identifies with the serpent Moses raised in the desert. Over the high altar stands a ciborium on porphyry columns, with painted stucco reliefs of the 10th century, and under it the golden altar, made in the 9th century for Archbishop Angilbert II by a goldsmith who signed himself Vuolvinius: gold and silver panels, gems and enamel, with the life of Christ on the front and the life of Ambrose on the back.

The apse and the crypt

In the apse, a gold mosaic shows Christ enthroned between the martyrs Gervasius and Protasius, with scenes from the life of Ambrose; it was badly damaged in 1943 and pieced together again. Beneath it, in the crypt, Ambrose, Gervasius and Protasius lie together in a glass and silver urn.

San Vittore in Ciel d’Oro

Off the right aisle, and now part of the Ambrosius museum ticket, is the little chapel of San Vittore in Ciel d’Oro, “in the sky of gold”, its dome covered in gold mosaic in the 5th century. On its walls stand six saints, one of them Ambrose himself: the oldest known picture of him, made within a century of his death.

The Stilicho sarcophagus

Under the pulpit on the left of the nave is a carved Roman sarcophagus of the 4th century, called, only by tradition, the tomb of Stilicho, the general who was the real power in the western empire around 400. The Romanesque pulpit above it reuses older carvings.

Bramante’s portico

On the left of the church, the canonry has a portico designed by Donato Bramante in 1492 and left unfinished when he went to Rome, wrecked by the bombs of 1943 and rebuilt after the war; four of its columns are carved to look like tree trunks with the branches cut off. The cloisters he designed for the monastery are now part of the Catholic University.

Don’t miss

• The golden altar Carolingian gold and gems.
• Ambrose’s portrait In San Vittore in Ciel d’Oro.
• The bronze serpent On its column in the nave.
• The atrium capitals Beasts and monsters.
• The Devil’s Column Outside, with its two holes.

Insider tips

More churches in Milan

• Santa Maria delle Grazie — Leonardo’s Last Supper, a short walk away.
• Milan Cathedral — the Duomo, and the baptistery where Ambrose baptised Augustine.

See all the Italian churches in this guide →