Sacro Cuore e San Giacomo di Carignano, Romanesque Revival church in Carignano district, Genoa, Italy.
Sacro Cuore e San Giacomo di Carignano is a Neo-Romanesque church on Via Jacopo Ruffini, built to Luigi Rovelli's design. Its facade has a central rose window, two large side openings and a top loggia flanked by two clocks, with a gilded bronze statue of the Sacred Heart by Giovanni Scanzi above the entrance. An octagonal dome topped by a tall spire rises over the interior, divided into three naves by paired Baveno granite columns.
The first stone was laid on 13 October 1892 in the presence of Archbishop Tommaso Reggio and nine bishops and archbishops, on a tree-lined square along Via Corsica. The church was named for the Sacred Heart at the wish of the late Monsignor Salvatore Magnasco, with the title of San Giacomo added from the older church. The crypt hall was blessed in 1896, the upper church inaugurated on 23 June 1912, and work finished in 1914 under Antonio Rovelli after his father Luigi's death in 1911.
The name joins the Sacred Heart, chosen at the wish of Archbishop Salvatore Magnasco, with San Giacomo, the title carried over from the 1154 church founded by Ansaldo Spinola. The old church kept parish registers of baptisms from 1564, deaths from 1596 and marriages from 1627, and these archives are held by the present building. Since 1969 the crypt hall has housed the Teatro Carignano.
The church stands on the tree-lined piazza once named after Nino Bixio, midway along Via Corsica, with the entrance on Via Jacopo Ruffini. The lower crypt hall, blessed in 1896, served as the provisional church and has housed the Teatro Carignano since 1969. The upper church was inaugurated on 23 June 1912.
The new church keeps the historic parish registers of the old San Giacomo: baptisms from 1564, deaths from 1596 and marriages from 1627. The earlier Romanesque church, demolished in 1905, was popularly called "the parish of the hanged" because the bodies of those executed at the nearby Cava square were thrown into a common well in its crypt until 1871.
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