Santuario di Santa Maria in Aula Regia

Built in the mid-seventeenth century, a colonnade with 142 arches leads to this church dedicated to Our Lady of the People, in the western part of city. Besides devotional requests to rescue Comacchio from the waters of the Po in 1645, it was the intention of the cardinal legate Stefano Donghi that the arcade, connecting the church to the city, would offer visitors from the mainland, a doubly greater prospect of the city. In the single-aisle sanctuary, the wooden altarpiece displays a beautiful 15th-century terracotta of the Virgin and Child, venerated as the city’s patron saint. There is also an admirable wooden Baroque Crucifix by Filippo Porri (1641) and the painting The Decollation of The Baptist by Carlo Bononi (c.1630).