San Giacomo Maggiore was built in 1267 as the church of the Augustinian friars. The brick Gothic exterior is restrained; the interior is a single broad nave with side chapels added by the noble families who patronised them in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
The Cappella Bentivoglio, halfway down the right aisle, is the most striking — frescoed by Lorenzo Costa and Francesco Francia in the 1490s and containing the tomb of Anton Galeazzo Bentivoglio. The connected Oratorio di Santa Cecilia, accessed from the portico outside, is the church's other masterpiece. The portico of the church is the longest in central Bologna.