Parish church of San Benedetto Abate (Chiesa parrocchiale di San Benedetto Abate)

In 1496, during the construction of the Addizione Erculea and its walls, Ercole I d’Este dedicated the gate at the western end of the new road, known as the Via dei Prioni, to Saint Benedict, and donated land to the Benedictines of Pomposa, who since 1476, with the support of the duke and his wife Eleonora, had settled in the ancient church of San Marco located there.

The first stone of the new, large, Benedictine basilica was laid on 3 July 1496 by Ercole I himself and by Nicolò Maria d’Este, bishop of Adria, but it was only later, in 1505, that Alfonso I d’Este asked the pope for permission to demolish the ancient building because it was getting in the way of his urban defence plans.

The church that stands today is a post-war reconstruction (1952-54), following the devastating bombing of 28 January 1944, carried out according to the original construction.

It is a Latin cross building with three naves and semi-circular chapels, as well as the terminations of the transept and the apse. Attributed by many scholars to Biagio Rossetti, this plan, innovative for Ferrara, should rather be seen in the context of schemes that were gaining ground at the time among the constructions undertaken in the monasteries of the Cassinese congregation of Santa Giustina, to which Saint Benedict belonged. The works were suspended at a level slightly above that of the foundations, and the elevations (where a mature system of architectural orders predominated) were built only later, starting from 1535, to a design by Giambattista Tristano.