The Rotonda di San Lorenzo is a round church in Mantua, Lombardy, dedicated to the martyr St. Lawrence. It dates from the late eleventh century, in the reign of the Canossa family. The article calls it the oldest church in the city, and it probably stands on the site of a Roman temple dedicated to Venus.
The central plan is built in brick in the Lombard tradition and takes inspiration from the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. A matronaeum, a loggia for female worshippers, runs above. Frescoes of the Byzantine school date from the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and a fifteenth-century fragment in the apse shows the martyrdom of St. Lawrence.
It was deconsecrated and used for dwellings, shops and stores, and other buildings were built over it in the early twentieth century. It was restored, the additions were removed, and it now sits below the level of Piazza delle Erbe.
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