Basilica Santa Maria della Croce, Crema

Santa Maria della Croce is a Roman Catholic sanctuary and minor basilica in Crema, in the Cremona Province of Lombardy, Italy.
The church was built in the Lombard Renaissance style about one and a half mile from city center, outside the medieval walls, on the road to Bergamo where a Marian apparition may have affected Caterina degli Uberti, a woman from Cremona. Legend holds that on 13 April 1490, after she was fatally wounded by her husband in a wooded area close to the town, and wishing to die in the Grace of God, she implored the help of the Virgin Mary who, it is said, ferried her to a nearby farmhouse. She was then moved inside the city walls where she died, after receiving the last rites and pardoning her husband. A simple wooden cross was placed where the murder came about. However prodigious phenomena continued to happen time and again transforming the site into a holy place to such an extent that the local authorities decided to build a sanctuary.
The work was commissioned to the architect Giovanni Battagio, whose masterpiece is the octagonal Sanctuary of the Incoronata in Lodi, his home town. However, the disciple of Bramante left the works around 1500, and was replaced by Giovanni Montanaro. The sanctuary, in an unfinished state, was damaged in the 1514 siege of the city by the Duchy of Milan army.

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