A short walk south of the old centre, Santa Maria del Baraccano grew up around a fifteenth-century shrine to the Virgin that had become a popular pilgrimage site. The current church is a Renaissance hall with a quiet interior decorated with frescoes by Francesco Francia and his school.
What makes the building distinctive is its incorporation into the city's defensive walls — the tower-gate of the Baraccano stands beside it, a fragment of the medieval circuit largely dismantled in the late nineteenth century. A pleasant detour if you are walking south through Piazza Aldrovandi.