Basilica of S. Lorenzo Maggiore, Milan

The Basilica of San Lorenzo Maggiore, one of the oldest and most important monuments in Milan, has extraordinary importance in the history of Western architecture.
In its essential features it is a late 16th-century church, built by integrating and covering an Early Christian structure dating from the end of the 4th century to the beginning of the 5th century,
which had already been transformed into Romanesque forms in the 12th century.
It consists of a main building with a central plan, covered by a dome, and a series of smaller buildings arranged along the sides and at the rear, built at different times.
Facing the basilica, along the axis of three exedras, there are three octagonal buildings: an imperial mausoleum (from the 16th century known as the Chapel of Saint Aquilinus of Milan) built shortly after the construction of the basilica; a martyrium built to house the remains of Saint Lawrence and Hippolytus of Rome (the latter to whom it is dedicated), contemporary with or perhaps earlier than the basilica; and the small mausoleum of Pope Sixtus II, added in the 6th century. The current façade was modified in 1894 by Cesare Nava.