Santa Croce, Mortara, Renaissance abbey in Mortara, Italy

Santa Croce is a Renaissance-style church in Mortara, designed by Pellegrino Tibaldi. It has a Latin-cross plan with a single nave, 42 metres long and 18 metres wide, and nine side chapels. The facade, clad in Vicenza stone in 1957, carries statues of the Mortara saints Alberto Avogadro and Guarino Foscherari.

The original church was founded in 1080 outside Mortara's walls under the patronage of Pope Gregory VII. After the Mortariensian monastery outside the walls was destroyed, the Lateran canons rebuilt the church and monastery inside the town to designs by Pellegrino Tibaldi; the church was rebuilt in 1596 and the Lateran palace erected as a monastery in 1573. The facade was only partly executed and was completed in 1957, while restorations in the 1960s altered the interior.

The abbey keeps the coat of arms of the Mortariense order, with a gemmed abbot's mitre, crozier and a Byzantine processional cross, partly visible in the stucco of the 16th-century main window of the Lateran palace. The wooden choir stalls, carved at the end of the 16th century, have the Instruments of the Passion engraved on each stall's backrest. In the second chapel on the left stands a wooden statue of Saint Anthony of Padua from the suppressed Clarissan monastery.

The abbey is centrally located in Mortara and is open during daytime hours. As an active place of worship, visitors should be respectful and check local opening times before visiting.

A marble slab between two chapels holds a footprint that once drew pilgrims during the Crusades. This relic reveals how objects of devotion shaped travel and pilgrimage routes across medieval Europe.