The Basilica of the Assumption, Baltimore
The British architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner declared it to be “the most beautiful church in America,” and those who know Baltimore’s Basilica of the Assumption at first hand tend to agree. The church is set on a hill that once commanded a view of the city’s busy harbor; its exterior greets you with an Ionic portico that is modeled after one of the best-preserved of ancient Roman temples, the Maison Carrée at Nimes, and makes a statement of the building’s Neoclassical propensities. Behind the portico rise two towers topped with onion domes, which for a time were thought not to be a part of the original plan. But the architect, Benjamin Henry Latrobe, had partly trained in Germany, where he might well have developed a taste for that touch of the exotic. Beyond the towers rises an even more towering hemispherical dome recalling that of the Roman Pantheon.
A Space of Light & Promise
In 1784, Pope Pius VI had created the Prefecture Apostolic of the United States, essentially a diocese that stretched from the East Coast to the Mississippi (excepting Louisiana), with its seat in Baltimore, the most Catholic city in the new nation. Who would build its first cathedral? Bishop John Carroll announced a competition, and the winning architect, Benjamin Latrobe, submitted two designs. One, a rather plain Gothic revival plan recalling the cathedrals of Europe, was rejected. Bishop Carroll instead opted for Latrobe’s Neoclassical design as better representing his vision of the new American republic and of the Church under the declaration of religious liberty. The colony of Maryland had been founded on a promise of religious toleration, which was later severely curtailed. With the ratification of the Bill of Rights, Maryland Catholics were once again permitted to vote, hold office, send their children to college, and worship openly in churches. The bishop wanted his cathedral to reflect his optimism for the new republic, to be a space filled with light and the fresh air of the promise of religious liberty.
And he got it. The floor plan of the Basilica is a more or less conventional Latin cross, with a broad nave, narrow side aisles, short transept arms, a choir, and a semicircular apse. Tall windows on either side were to be filled with clear glass, not stained or painted, to let in maximum natural light. But the space is dominated by Latrobe’s massive coffered dome, a huge, luminous space flanked by two shallower domes and presided over by the painted dove of the Holy Spirit. Nothing on the outside prepares you for this flood of light; this is neither the darkened temple of Antiquity nor the mysterious heights of the Gothic. It is instead something rather new.
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Mary Elizabeth Podles is the retired curator of Renaissance and Baroque art at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland. She is the author of A Thousand Words: Reflections on Art and Christianity (St. James Press, 2023). She and her husband Leon, a Touchstone senior editor, have six children and live in Baltimore, Maryland. She is a contributing editor for Touchstone.
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