Cathedral Basilica of St. Cyriacus

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Ancona Cathedral (Italian: Duomo di Ancona, Basilica Cattedrale Metropolitana di San Ciriaco) is a Roman Catholic cathedral in Ancona, central Italy, dedicated to Saint Cyriacus. It is the seat of the Archbishop of Ancona. The building is an example of mixed Romanesque-Byzantine and Gothic elements, and stands on the site of the former acropolis of the Greek city, the Guasco hill which overlooks Ancona and its gulf.

History: Excavations carried on in 1932 indicated that a Greek temple was on the site as early as the 4rd century BC. A Christian basilica was built on top of it in the 6th century. Between the 10th and 11th centuries the church was enlarged and became a cathedral; it had an entrance facing south-east (where the current Chapel of the Crucifix is). Further enlargement works occurred between the late 12th and the early 13th centuries, to obtain a Greek cross, a typically Byzantine plan, and a new entrance, towards the south-west, resulting in the church now facing the port and the ancient neighborhoods of the city. The old church became the transept of the new one. In 1739, Luigi Vanvitelli designed a monumental pulpit in the left transept to display the seventeenth-century...