This is the city’s most famous monument. Dedicated to Sant´Andrea, built between 1219 and 1227 by Cardinal Guala Bicchieri, it is one of the Italian architectonic works closest in spirit and form to the French gothic style. The façade, with its surprising chromatic balance, is a blend of Lombard-Emilian motifs (gable roof, round-arched doors, cornices and a double order of loggias) with Provencal and Norman elements (embrasure doors, lateral towers and their cusps, capitals). Both the façade and the towers are made of grey-green stone from the Ort area. The three divided naves are surmounted by 18 bays on which Gothic cross-ribbed vaults rest. Above the Medieval octagonal tyburium there is an octagonal bell tower surmounted by a pyramid-shaped cusp made of bricks, typical of Benedictine and Cistercian monasteries. In 1818, a commission was set up to restore the complex, which in the meantime was closed to worshippers. The works, organised by Carlo Emanuele Arborio Mella, were completed in 1840.
