The Basilica of Saint Magnus (Italian: ) is the principal church of the Italian town of Legnano, in the province of Milan. It is dedicated to the Saint Magnus, who was Archbishop of Milan from 518 to 530. The church was built from 1504 to 1513 in the Renaissance-style designed by Donato Bramante. The bell tower was added between the years 1752 and 1791. On 18 March 1950, Pope Pius XII named the Basilica of San Magno a minor basilica.

The interior of the basilica church is adorned with numerous first-class examples of Lombard Renaissance artwork. Examples are Gian Giacomo Lampugnani's frescoes of the main vault, the remains of 16th-century paintings by Evangelista Luini, the frescoes of the main chapel by Bernardino Lanini, and the altarpiece by Giampietrino. The item of greatest significance, however, is a polyptych by Bernardino Luini that is widely considered by art historians to be his masterpiece.

History The origins: the ancient church of San Salvatore

Upon the site of the Basilica of San Magno once stood the Lombard Romanesque parish , whose construction has been traced to the 10th or 11th centuries AD. By the 15th century, the stability of the parish church's foundation had been drastically weakened by its age and water leaking in from the nearby . To make matters worse, the Olona was prone to frequent and destructive flooding. Finally, in the very late 15th century, the parish church partially collapsed. The people of Legnano obtained permission from Duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza, to demolish its remains and to build a new church on the same site. Because the parish church had had a rather dour appearance, Legnano's populace decided to erect a much more sumptuous place of worship.

There are a few reasons that the people chose, in spite of the danger of continued water damage, to reuse the site of the parish church. One is a confidence displayed by the people of Legnano in the technical skills of the builders of the basilica church. Another is that what is now the Piazza San Magno was the town's primary cemetery until a fiat of the Napoleonic government forced the municipal government to move the cemetery out of the town in 1808. The nobility were laid to rest inside the church until their bones were removed from the Basilica of San Magno in the 18th century.

Construction The greatest monetary contributions to the construction of the basilica church were made by the and Vismara families, two of the oldest families in Legnano. The cornerstone was laid on 4 May 1504 and construction was finished on 6 June 1513. The decoration of the basilica church's interior began shortly thereafter with the frescoes of Gian Giacomo Lampugnani on the main dome. The church received its first two bells in 1510. The next year, however, on 11 December 1511, Legnano was razed and sacked Swiss soldiers, then fighting for the during the War of the League of Cambrai. The church was also damaged; the scaffolding on its exterior was incinerated. Writing about the construction of the basilica church, Agostino Pozzi, the provost of Legnano, reported in the Storia delle chiese di Legnano:

Work on the church was suspended from 1516 to 1523, for two reasons. The second was that funding for the church had ceased; the primary donors, the local nobility, were made destitute after the French drove the Sforzas from the Duchy of Milan in 1499 and subsequent fighting. That poverty among the nobility was also the author of much administrative disruption in Legnano, as they fought to hold onto their possessions within the Duchy. Compounding all these difficulties was a disinterest in Legnano by the Archbishop of Milan, who began withdrawing holy orders from the area. This had been provoked by the loss of the rebellious tendencies 's , and thus the need for ducal troops in Legnano.

The original plans of the basilica have been lost and therefore no documents bearing the signature of its architect. Bramante's name, in fact, appears only in later written testimonies. The design of the basilica of San Magno was probably carried out by Giovanni Antonio Amadeo or his follower Tommaso Rodari on a design by Donato Bramante. The proof that assigns the authorship of the drawings to the famous artist is contained in a writing of 1650 by Agostino Pozzo, provost of San Magno, which reads:

The first document that mentions Donato Bramante as an architect of the basilica of San Magno is instead a text by Federico Borromeo, then archbishop of Milan, which is connected to his pastoral visit to Legnano in 1618, an excerpt of which states:

The construction was then directed by an unnamed master, and Legnano's most experienced artist, Gian Giacomo Lampugnani. Gian Giacomo was a distant relative of , the 13th century master builder who had built and . Gian Giacomo had also created the first piece of interior decor for the basilica with his 1515 fresco on the main vault.

The basilica was consecrated on 15 December 1529 by Francesco Landino, auxiliary bishop for the Archdiocese of Milan.

From 17th to 20th century

The entrance to the basilica, originally facing the and the Chapel of the Immaculate Conception was moved in 1610 to its present location. This entrance was walled off and transformed into an atrium to the Chapel of the Immaculate Conception. The second original entrance, located in the Chapel of the Feast of the Cross, faced the clergy houses to the basilica's south. This entrance was also walled off, and two new entrances opened on the front facade facing the Piazza San Magno.

The main entrance was opened sometime before 1840, according to records from a pastoral visit by card. Giuseppe Pozzobonelli in 1761, as the side entrances did not allow visitors to enter directly before the high altar. The work on the entrances was done by Francesco Maria Richini, a religious architect and the future designer of the , also in Legnano. He also modified the basilica's exterior by adding Baroque elements like pilasters, pediments, and lintels to the new entrances, windows, and roof lantern. It is probable that the plans, were they not destroyed in 1515, were lost at this point.

The basilica's north–south orientation was chosen because of urban planning; to its west was the old cemetery and on the east was the Olona, so it was decided that no doors should be placed on these sides of the basilica. The main chapel, however, was built facing east in traditional Christian practice. This resulted later in those entering the basilica from its new main entrance finding the high altar to their left, so the entrances were rotated 90° to the east and west. Another possibility is that, in the first half of the basilica's history, the high altar was aligned to the main entrance.

On 20 August 1611, two bells that had been consecrated by Cardinal Federico Borromeo on 2 July 1610, were added to the bell tower. One of these bells was cast with a fragment of a bell associated to a miracle performed by Saint Theodore acquired by the basilica's canon from the bishop of Sion, Switzerland, as recorded in the parish register.

The modern main door was instead opened later, perhaps in 1840, or earlier, as shown by some archive notes relating to the pastoral visit made in Legnano by cardinal Giuseppe Pozzobonelli in 1761, in which there is a description of the Basilica of San Magno where the three doors facing the modern piazza San Magno are cited as well as drawn. It was decided to open the central door because the two side entrances did not allow the visitor entering the basilica to be directly in front of the main altar.

On 12 November 1850 a commission created by the Austrian government on the proposal of the provost of San Magno, and made up of the painters Francesco Hayez and Antonio de Antoni and the sculptor Giovanni Servi, wrote a report that had the purpose of carrying out a survey to evaluate the possibility of carry out a restoration of the basilica, a hypothesis which was not followed up. In 1888 another restoration was organized, which however was not approved by the Conservation of Monuments for Lombardy. The first restoration that went into port, made necessary to remedy the damage caused by a cyclone that struck Legnano on 20 July 1910, was then carried out from 1911 to 1914.

The design by Donato Bramante is confirmed by the papal bull of March 19, 1950 issued by Pope Pius XII which conferred the dignity of a Roman minor basilica on the church of Legnano:

The title and the denomination

A hypothesis that explains the entitlement of the basilica to Magnus of Milan is linked to some events that took place a few decades after the Fall of the Western Roman Empire. In 523 the Byzantine emperor Justin I promulgated an edict against the Arians: in response, the king of the Ostrogoths Theoderic the Great, who was of the Aryan faith, began to persecute Catholics, killing and imprisoning important religious figures as well. On the death of Theodoric, on the throne of the Ostrogoths, sat the most tolerant Athalaric: thanks to the new king, and to the intercession of Magno of Milan, the Milanese archbishop who was later proclaimed a saint, many prisoners were released.

Since these persecutions also affected Legnano, its inhabitants decided to name Magnus of Milan first the central apse of the ancient church of San Salvatore, then the parish, which was created on 24 December 1482 with the name of "parish of San Magno and San Salvatore", and finally the new church: Magnus of Milan later became also the patron saint of the municipality of Legnano.

As far as the name is concerned, the legnanese basilica was originally known as "church of San Magno". On 7 August 1584, on the occasion of the transfer of the provost tax from Parabiago to Legnano, change of location decreed by cardinal Carlo Borromeo, archbishop of Milan, the religious building changed its name to "provost church of San Magno" and the parish priest of Magnus of Milan acquired the title of provost.

The transfer of the provost tax from Parabiago to Legnano (which also led to the creation of the parish church of the same name) was dictated by various reasons: from the greater number of inhabitants of the village of Legnano, to the fact that the church of San Magno was larger than the parabiaghese church of Santi Gervasio and Protasio, by the presence of the hospice of Sant'Erasmo and by the availability, in Legnano, of greater resources, also economic, as well as by the presence in the village of Milan of various ecclesiastical structures, including some convents.

Faced with the displacement of the provost, the Parabiaghsis appealed to the pope, but without success, given the endorsement of the archiepiscopal decree by the Roman Curia, which occurred in 1586. Officially acquired relevance also from the most important ecclesiastical hierarchies, from this century onwards, the legnanese church began to be called, to emphasize the relief, "collegiate church of San Magno".

On March 19, 1950, with a papal bull, Pope Pius XII raised the provost church of San Magno to a Roman minor basilica, from which the modern name descended.

The plan of the basilica entrance hall; chapel of St. Agnes; chapel of the Immaculate Conception; chapel of San Carlo and San Magno; chapel of the Baptistery or of the Sacred Heart; major chapel; chapel of the Blessed Sacrament; sacristy passage; chapel of the Holy Crucifix; chapel of San Pietro Martire; sacristy; remains of the bell tower of the ancient church of San Salvatore; Bell tower

Architecture The church