Bell Tower of the Basilica di SanQuirino

Address and contacts

Opening times

The tower is generally not accessible inside

How to get there

See the indication to reach Correggio

Historical notes

The limits of the old castle of Correggio are well marked by the surviving bulwark (14th century), now adapted as the bell tower of the Basilica of San Quirino.
With its scarp base, the lower part of the tower still conserves the large fourteenth-century pointed arch which constituted the access door to the castle of Correggio. The tower was erected and crenellated in the 15th century, then transformed into a bell tower at the time of the construction of the adjacent church. On the ground floor, originally used as a chapel, the reliquaries of San Quirino and other saints were conserved while the church was being built. The restoration of the monument, now all in exposed brick, showed the presence of angular slabs of sandstone, traces of corbels and of the old crenellation in below the roof. Now municipal property, the tower held the old clock, while the use of the bells raised a dispute between the community and the ecclesiastic chapter that lasted until 1960. The bell chamber holds the large bell or “campanone” in cast bronze decorated with historical scenes, created on behalf of the community through a public competition by the artisan Pietro Bosi of Parma in 1709.