Basilica of San Giacomo Maggiore

The Basilica of San Giacomo Maggiore features a massive, unfinished brick façade that looms directly over the street. Founded in twelve sixty-seven, the church served as the primary base for the Augustinian order in Bologna. Giovanni II Bentivoglio, the city’s de facto ruler in the late fifteenth century, commissioned the ornate side chapel here to secure his family’s legacy. When he was eventually driven from power, his enemies took hammers to the chapel’s reliefs, leaving the stone faces of his children permanently disfigured.