Church of Santi Vitale e Agricola: tickets, opening hours and tips

The church of Saints Vitale and Agricola in Arena is a church in Bologna's historic center, on via San Vitale. According to tradition it stands on the site of the arena of Roman Bononia, where the Christian martyrs Vitalis and Agricola are said to have died. It has a very ancient crypt and a bell tower with a particular sound.

The most curious thing is the four bells, mounted on wooden stocks to be rung by hand "alla bolognese". They are tuned a tone apart and form the "Tritone", a chord that old treatises called diabolus in musica, the devil in music. A tuning unique in all of Bologna.

The classical-style façade is built over the porticoes and partly hides the slender bell tower, which carries two crossed palm branches at the top: the symbol of the two saints' martyrdom.

Inside, the church has a single nave. Above the high altar, in a gilded altarpiece with caryatids, is the painting of the "Martyrdom of Saints Vitalis and Agricola" by Luigi Busi, from 1876. On the choir loft above the entrance wall is a nineteenth-century organ in a gilded, carved wooden case, from the previous century.

On the left, on the threshold of the chapel of Santa Maria degli Angeli, is a cross on a column, mistakenly believed to be one of the four crosses of Saint Petronius. It stood in a little chapel in front of the church, demolished in 1798, and it also spent time at the Certosa.

The chapel of Santa Maria degli Angeli was built in the late fifteenth century by Gaspare Nadi, and was originally separate from the church. The portal on via San Vitale is thought to be the work of Andrea Marchesi, called Il Formigine. Inside, a Holy Family in painted wax.

Below the church is the early Christian crypt, the only remnant of the primitive church, rediscovered in 1890 and reopened to the public two years later.

The medieval church stood in a Benedictine monastery, and was oriented like the road to Ravenna, with three naves. In the late sixteenth century it was rebuilt from scratch: the façade moved to the street, the nave became single, and in 1641 it was reconsecrated.

The remains of the two saints, according to tradition, were recognized by Saint Ambrose during a visit to Bologna in 392.

Under Napoleon the parish was suppressed, in 1806, and the crypt became the literary salon of a countess, Rossi Martinetti, who with her husband had also bought the adjoining Benedictine monastery to turn it into a palace. The circle was called the Orto delle Esperidi, the Garden of the Hesperides.

The parish was re-established in 1824. In 1872-1873 heavy restoration gave the church today's façade.