The complex called Le Sette Chiese — the Seven Churches — sits on a triangular cobbled piazza a five-minute walk east of Piazza Maggiore. What looks from outside like one rambling Romanesque building is in fact several churches, chapels, and cloisters fused together over a millennium, beginning in the fifth century when Saint Petronius supposedly laid the first stones over a Roman temple to Isis.
The atmospheric octagonal Church of the Holy Sepulchre at the centre contains the tomb of Petronius himself. The Pilate's Courtyard behind it has a tall stone basin and a small grove of citrus trees. The whole complex is free to enter and one of the quietest, most contemplative corners of central Bologna.