Rotonda di San Lorenzo

The church of the “Rotonda”, as it is familiarly called by the people of Mantua, is dedicated to San Lorenzo and is the oldest church existing today in Mantua. Built in the second half of the year 1000, in the Canossian period, perhaps on the remains of an ancient Roman temple, it has a circular shape inspired by the chapel of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem.
It was probably part of the pilgrimage route to the relic of the Holy Blood, the most important in Christianity, found in the year 804 and still preserved in Mantua in the Basilica of Sant’Andrea. Thousands of pilgrims, for over twelve centuries, have come here to pray in front of the Sacred Vessels where the blood of Jesus collected by the Roman centurion Longinus is kept.
The church of San Lorenzo, closed to worship and deconsecrated in 1579, was covered and hidden by buildings until its memory was lost. Only in 1906, by demolishing the buildings that supported it, it was brought to light once again and restored. Of State Property, it is granted in concession to the Dominican Province.