Chiesa di Santa Sofia, Padua

Santa Sofia in Padua is the oldest church structure in the city. It was built in the 10th century on the site of a presumed Mithraeum. A grant was made to bishop Sinibaldo of this church in 1123, which had already been in construction. The Romanesque facade was constructed from 1106 to 1127, and is now somewhat inclined to subsidence of the soil. The interior is now relatively sparse.
Tradition is that the church was founded by St. Prosdocimus on the ruins of a temple dedicated to Apollo. The first document in which is mentioned the church of Santa Sofia and dated February 19, 1123: the bishop of Padua Sinibaldo intervened to urge the completion work of the church, work builders that might for decades, at least from 1109, in a yard struck by major disasters such as the earthquake of 1117.
There are numerous archaeological finds (dated between the second and fourth centuries). Some records date the apse to the Carolingian age. Much of this is based on the crypt, which is within 50 years as the nave of the Basilica of San Marco, using radiocarbon methods
The apse was the first phase of the construction, sometime in the ninth century. Primary construction was between 1070 and 1080. This phase ended in 1106. The second phase opened in 1117 and ended in about 1170. The structure underwent embellishment near the end of the fourteenth century to meet the liturgical reforms approved by the Council of Trent. The seventeen-year-old Andrea Mantegna performs his first independent work, an altarpiece depicting the Madonna with Child in conversation with saints. It was scattered in the seventeenth century was dated 1448

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