Chiesa di Santa Fosca in Santa Maria Maggiore, Minor basilica and parish church in Treviso, Italy.
Chiesa di Santa Fosca in Santa Maria Maggiore is a three-nave church in Italian Gothic style located at Piazza Santa Maria Maggiore in Treviso. The facade features five Gothic tabernacles made from Istrian stone and a central rose window that gives the building a balanced, symmetrical appearance.
According to tradition the church dates to the earliest evangelisation of the Treviso area by Saint Prosdocimus, and a first building stood between the 1st and 3rd centuries; it was probably destroyed in the Hungarian sack of 899 and rebuilt in the 11th century. The present structure was rebuilt from 1473 by the Lateran canons. In 1509, during the War of the League of Cambrai, demolition for new bastions began at the apse and stopped at the veneration of the 14th-century Madonna and Child fresco attributed to Tommaso da Modena. Allied bombing on 13 March 1945 gutted the nave and largely destroyed the facade.
The church is also known as Madonna Grande, in Treviso dialect Madona Granda. The cult of Saint Fosca, a Libyan virgin and martyr, spread in the Middle Ages across Venetian lands but reached this sanctuary only at the end of the 18th century, when the parish of Santa Fosca moved here from its demolished church in Via Bonifacio; the old church's cantoria now stands on the right side of the transept.
The church is centrally located at Piazza Santa Maria Maggiore and easily accessible on foot, with multiple weekly services at various times of day. Visitors should expect to encounter worshippers during these service times.
The bell tower was originally a defensive tower built beside the church during the War of Cambrai; the Venetian Senate donated it to the church as a campanile in 1516. It was partly rebuilt taller at the end of the 19th century, but the project was never finished.
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