Chiesa di Sant'Alessandro

The Chiesa di Sant'Alessandro stands in Milan, where its architecture connects late Mannerism with early Lombard Baroque. Construction began in 1601 on the former Zebedia prison site.

Its name recalls the Roman prison where tradition says Saint Alexander was held. The plan places a Greek cross inside a rectangle. Isolated columns support vaulted ceilings, a design that influenced architecture across central and northern Italy. Bell towers flank this richly decorated facade.

Bas-reliefs, stone columns, and pilasters shape the facade, whose lighter upper section Marco Bianchi completed in the early eighteenth century, displaying Lombard Baroque. The lower section of the facade predates 1620. Inside, paintings by Camillo Procaccini and Daniele Crespi present Lombard art from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Procaccini painted the Assumption and the Nativity.

Crespi's Saint John the Baptist appears alongside confessionals and a pulpit carved from hard stones. The second chapel is dedicated to Saint Joseph. Its altar combines Ligurian marble with the Madonna and Child, saints, and angels. Costanza Balbi Cusani funded the chapel's rich decoration.