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What to See · Churches

Church of Santi Quirico e Giulitta (Urio)

Ramo di Como

Carate Urio →

Anyone arriving at Urio from the lake sees the Romanesque bell tower of Santi Quirico e Giulitta, in Moltrasio stone, rising above the houses. The church, the parish church of the hamlet of Carate Urio, has the shape given by a rebuilding of 1865, but centuries of history have passed around that 12th-century tower.

History

The first document to name the parish of Urio is of 1490. The municipality of Carate Urio dates its membership of the pieve of Zezio, the pieve of the city of Como, to 1335; Wikipedia says only that it was a dependency of the pieve already in the 14th century. At the end of the 16th century, at the pastoral visit of Bishop Feliciano Ninguarda (1592, according to the municipality), the faithful numbered 116, of whom 60 were communicants.

The municipality publishes the description Ninguarda left of the church of the time, a building about 13 metres long and 7.5 high, with two aisles paved in stone and a roof of boards left in view. The main aisle, on the left, had the altar of the patron saints under a new vault; the tabernacle was painted and partly gilded, but the Eucharist was kept in the sacristy «for greater safety». In the smaller aisle, on the right and older, there was a little altar of Saint Quirico that the bishop ordered removed, also because the ruins of a nearby tower risked letting rain and snow into the church. The baptismal font was of white marble and the bell tower, near the high altar, had two bells.

In the following centuries the numbers grow slowly: 235 souls between 1779 and 1780, 239 in 1788, 361 at the time of Bishop Andrea Carlo Ferrari’s visit in 1892. The confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament had been founded in 1779, and at Cavadino the parish had two oratories, dedicated to the Holy Trinity and to the Nativity of Mary. Urio was an independent municipality until 1927, when it merged into Carate Urio.

The torrent that runs down behind the village (the Pangino, according to the municipality) did damage several times, in 1752, 1814 and 1841, and after the last floods the church was rebuilt in 1865. Not every source isolates that date so cleanly: the regional record gives the complex a period running from the 17th century to 1865. According to myLakeComo the rebuilding rested on the perimeter walls of a Romanesque church contemporary with the tower, and in the Baroque age the entrance was moved from the old Via Regina to the lake side: for this reason the apse does not face east, as in Christian tradition, but towards the sunset.

What to see

The bell tower is the oldest part. It has a square base and is in Moltrasio stone; the double belfry has one mullioned window on each side and is covered by a four-pitched roof. The municipality, myLakeComo and Villa Senagra agree on the 12th century, while according to some scholars the part with the windows was rebuilt.

The façade, on the lake side, is gabled and plain: four Tuscan pilasters carry a smooth frieze and the pediment, with the doorway in the centre and a semicircular window above. Inside there is a single nave with side chapels, a presbytery raised a few steps and a semicircular apse. The municipality points above all to the Renaissance paintings, two panels with the Assumption and with Saints Rocco and Domenico (the latter above the confessional), as well as canvases of the 16th and 17th centuries, among them an Immacolata in the Morazzone iconography.

Outside, the churchyard is a viewpoint: it faces the shore of Faggeto, across the lake, and people leaving Mass find the Lario in front of them.

Practical information

  • The church is on the Via Regina (Via Regina Vecchia in the regional record), in Urio.
  • According to the municipality access is free during public opening hours, which are not published: to visit the church it is best to ask the parish of Urio.

Sources

On the map

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