History

The Duomo stands on ground that has been used for public buildings since Roman times: archaeological traces beneath and around the cathedral point to a temple and a theatre on the same site. The first Christian basilica here is dated to the 6th century, part of the paleochristian wave of church-building in the Veneto after the fall of the Western Empire. Little of that first building survives above ground today.

The cathedral took on its medieval character between the 11th and 12th centuries, when Bishop Rotario reorganised the surrounding area and had the church rebuilt in Romanesque style. The crypt beneath the present sanctuary belongs to this phase and is the oldest substantial structure still visible inside the building. Three Lombard apsidal chapels from this era were later preserved even as the rest of the church was transformed.

The building seen today is largely the product of an 18th-century campaign. Starting in 1759, the Treviso-born scholar and architect Giordano Riccati directed a neoclassical reconstruction that replaced most of the Romanesque fabric while keeping the old apses. Work stopped in 1782 and picked up again in 1790 under Giannantonio Selva, one of the leading Neoclassical architects working in the Veneto at the time. The project reached its final form only in 1836, when Francesco Bomben and engineer Gaspare Petrovich completed the monumental staircase and Ionic-columned pronaos that now front the cathedral on Piazza Duomo. The building suffered damage during an Allied bombing raid on Good Friday, 7 April 1944, which also destroyed part of an adjoining library.