The present shape is due to the nineteenth-century renovation commissioned to Giuseppe Segusini and completed in 1877; from the ancient building was preserved only the entrance portal of 1481 and the frescoed lunette above, the oldest external mural painting of the city. The church played a fundamental role during the Napoleonic invasion, when many religious institutions were suppressed and their assets dispersed; the building became a sort of deposit of works from the destroyed monasteries of Santa Chiara, Holy Spirit and Saint Peter in Chains.
The back of the church of San Giacomo can be seen perfectly outside the city walls; once out of Porta Imperiale and turning left you reach Via Roma that connects with Campo Giorgio right under the apse of the church that you can admire from here looking up at the hill and also observing the sundial that marks the time on the part rear of the building.
Art works:
The interior is dominated by the high altar in polychrome marble of the late sixteenth century, here arrived from the convent of Santa Chiara after its suppression in 1810; inside there is a table of the Madonna with Child, San Giacomo e San Martino by the painter Girolamo Lusa from Feltre executed in 1521-1522. The two side altars, renovated to a design by Segusini, date back to 1853 and conserve, the one on the right, an altarpiece attributed to Pietro Cogorani depicting the Immaculate with Saint Francis of Paola and a holy bishop together with a wooden sculpture of the Pietà made in Belluno between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and on the left a wooden statue of Saint Anthony of Padua with the Child Jesus.
On the right wall of the nave, two niches hold respectively a large and magnificent Crucifix in painted lime wood, which arrived in 1808 from the suppressed Franciscan Convent of Santo Spirito and the Custody of Santa Teodora, work of extraordinary quality by the sculptor Andrea Brustolon from Belluno, executed in 1696 for the Augustinian nuns of the deceased monastery of San Pietro in Vincoli.
After the Second World War, the veneration of St. Rita of Cascia took root, for the vote of a family that led to the transformation of the cellar into a crypt dedicated to her. On its walls many wanted to engrave their own name or that of their deceased. Here Modolo painted two canvases and two frescoes, depicting the most significant episodes of the life of St. Rita. On May 22, the feast of the Saint, the church is filled for the numerous Masses and the statue is brought to the upper church and exposed to the devotion of the faithful and the blessing is imparted to the children. The faithful are offered the red roses of S.Rita.
