Santa Maria della Consolazione (Todi)

Santa Maria della Consolazione is a Renaissance-style pilgrimage church in Todi, Italy. The centralized, symmetric plan, surmounted by a tall dome, distinguishes this Renaissance church, from the more common elongated basilica or Latin-cross designs.

Construction begun in 1508, on the flank of the city hill, just outside the walls. The design is often erroneously attributed to Bramante. But construction was begun by Cola da Caprarola, supposedly aided by Baldassarre Peruzzi It has a Greek cross plan: three apses are polygonal and the one on the north side is semicircular. Other architects who helped bring the work to completion were Antonio da Sangallo the Younger, Galeazzo Alessi, Michele Sanmicheli, Vignola and Ippolito Scalza. The church was completed only by 1607. The apse is surmounted by a square terrace with 4 eagles at the corners, from which the dome rises. In the interior, the altar houses a miraculous icon of the Madonna. Legend holds that the worker, who was blind in one eye, had the sight of that eye restored, when he wiped it with a cloth that had cleaned this icon. The church was built at the site where the icon had been housed. Twelve niches in the first three apses house giant statues of the apostles. Also noteworthy is the wooden statue of Pope Martin I, a native of the Todi area.