After fifty years, the crypt of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher is once again a heritage of the community, an extraordinary artistic and archaeological monument in the heart of ancient Milan, the true fulcrum of the Roman civitas that St. Charles Borromeo defined as the navel of the city and that Leonardo da Vinci, in a map of the Codex Atlanticus, indicated how the real means of Milan, and currently included in the urban area, between piazza Pio XI, piazza San Sepolcro and via della Zecca, is located next to the architectural complex which includes the Library Ambrosiana.
The first phase of the intervention works, which began at the beginning of 2015, based on a project by Gaetano Arricobene, received the patronage and contribution of the MiBACT, the patronage and contribution of the Lombardy Region, the contribution of the Cariplo Foundation.
Civil life and religious life the block that includes the church perfectly covers the central area of the ancient Mediolanum. Leonardo da Vinci, fascinated by the beauty and symbolic value of the site, in drawing his 'bird's eye' plan of Milan, took the temple of San Sepolcro as his centre.
Its genesis dates back to 1030 when, a coin dealer from Milan, named Rozzone, had a church erected on the ancient Roman forum which the archbishop Ariberto d'Intimiano solemnly consecrated to the Holy Trinity.
Its millennial history overlaps with that of the Crusades. After the reconquest of Jerusalem, the then archbishop of Milan, Anselm IV of Bovisio, in memory of this extraordinary event, on 15 July 1100, changed the dedication to the church of the Holy Sepulchre.
This title is reinforced by the presence, since its foundation, in its underground part, of the copy of the sepulcher of Christ, made by a master from Campione of the early fourteenth century, inside which, according to tradition, the earth taken by the Crusaders in Jerusalem was placed and other relics from holy places.
A place of enormous sacredness, the crypt was chosen by Saint Charles Borromeo as a personal place of prayer, where he went every Wednesday and Friday afternoon. And it was not infrequent to see him spend entire nights in what he himself called the gymnasium of the Holy Spirit, in adoration of the simulacrum of Christ's sepulchre. For this reason, after his canonization, a seventeenth-century polychrome terracotta statue of San Carlo kneeling in front of the sarcophagus was placed.
In one of the niches you can admire a large copper palm, symbol of wisdom, originally conceived as a fountain, commissioned by Cardinal Federico Borromeo in 1616 for Gian Andrea Biffi and Gerolamo Olivieri.
San Sepolcro is also a place of devotion to Saint Mary Magdalene who, according to the evangelist John, was the first to discover the empty tomb on Easter morning and received the first apparition of the Risen One. It is in fact she, in a fresco from the 1300s, unfortunately now evanescent, in the left transept, who is depicted to the right of the triumphant Christ, with her body veiled by long hair, while on the left we see a crowned woman, perhaps the Empress Saint 'Elena, mother of Constantine, who found the true cross of the Lord on Calvary.
The crypt will also provide visitors with contact with one of the oldest testimonies of the city's history. The flooring, in fact, made up of large slabs of very resistant white stone, called 'di Verona', comes from the pavement of the ancient Roman forum of the XNUMXth century which represented the main square of the Roman civitas, where the major civil and religious activities took place .
To celebrate the reopening, the crypt will host the facsimile exhibition of the Shroud, set up in an air-conditioned display case specially created by Lumen Center Italia.
