The church of San Giovanni Battista is the historic baptismal church of the pieve of Bellagio and the seat of the archpriest, in the hamlet of San Giovanni, on a square that runs down to the lake. The present building is Baroque, built between the 16th and 18th centuries where a temple already documented in the 10th century stood, and it keeps an altarpiece by Gaudenzio Ferrari of 1532.
History
The parish website speaks of a probable Lombard foundation and of a three-nave Romanesque basilica, attested in the 10th century, of which almost nothing remains. The documents mention a priest Adamo of San Giovanni in 995 and an Arioaldo in 1009 (Como e il suo Lago). One thesis, taken up by Wikipedia and Como e il suo Lago, holds that the oratory south of the church was built on the foundations of the older temple; the parish website instead recalls that the building to the south was the oratory of San Rocco, with an ossuary.
On the dates of the rebuilding too the sources diverge. The regional record gives the church as existing before 1584 and the parish website as wholly rebuilt between the 17th and 18th centuries, with the date 1685 carved on the outside of the apse; Como e il suo Lago recalls a new building of 1584, partly of 1685, and a present form due to works of the second half of the 18th century, which Wikipedia fixes at 1785, when Bishop Mugiasca consecrated it.
For the diocesan archives it was an arch-priestly and collegiate parish, the only one in the whole pieve, placed in a vicariate with Isola and Lenno. In 1788 it had six canonries (five of free appointment, one of patronage); the jurisdiction covered San Giovanni, Loppia, Guggiate, Suira, Casate, Visgnola, Aureggio, Pescallo and Regatola. It was a vicariate seat throughout the 20th century until 1968. Wikipedia also recalls, in a document of 1295, seven priests of the collegiate church in dispute with the Milanese abbots of Sant’Ambrogio.
What to see
The regional record describes a nave with side chapels, a polygonal apse and a square bell tower with an octagonal drum and dome, set against the apse. The interior is spacious and bright: for the parish website it has two chapels per side, while Wikipedia speaks of a wide transept with two side altars. The fresco decoration is by the Lario painter Tagliaferri, who worked on it from 1897 to 1909: the Transfiguration in the dome, the evangelists in the pendentives, episodes from the life of the Baptist on the walls. The gilded wooden high altar is by Antonio Pino of Bellagio (1685-1692).
The most important work is Gaudenzio Ferrari’s altarpiece with the Risen Christ and saints, painted in 1532 and given by the Frizzoni family in the mid-19th century. In the central chapel on the right is the Madonna delle Grazie, an early 16th-century fresco from the old basilica, to which two angels were added in the 17th century. A marble Virgin of the Bernini school, which came from Genoa and was donated in 1874, is called an Assumption by the parish website and an Immaculate Conception by Wikipedia, which attributes it to Ercole Ferrata. The chapel of San Primo has a statue of the saint assembled in the 1940s to hold the relics. The Carrara organ from Legnano, of 1862, was an ex voto for the cholera escaped in 1855.
The five present bells, from the Grassmayr foundry of Innsbruck, were cast on 26 July 2013 and the Bishop of Como Diego Coletti blessed them on the square on 5 January 2014. The old ones, according to Wikipedia cast in 1822 by Felice Bizzozero of Varese, are on display in the courtyard of the presbytery, reached through a medieval pointed-arch portal.
The square
The pier was built in the 15th century at the wish of the archpriest, and eight mill-game boards are carved on its stones: for some, a sign of a Templar presence. The churchyard was a cemetery until the end of the 18th century, and the two cypresses date from the mid-19th. The Lourdes grotto was built in the 1950s by the archpriest don Giulio Botta (myLakeComo). According to Como e il suo Lago, at the end of June the square hosts the Bellagio fair.
Practical information
- The church is on piazza San Giovanni Battista, in the hamlet of San Giovanni, in Bellagio.
- The Bellagio tourist portal gives the pre-holiday Mass at 18 and the holiday one at 10, and myLakeComo writes that the church is open only at those times, Saturday and Sunday morning. We found no up-to-date official source for other hours: it is best to ask the parish.
- In the hamlet there is also the Museum of Navigation Instruments.
Sources
- Parrocchie di Bellagio, Le Chiese
- Lombardia Beni Culturali, Chiesa di S. Giovanni, complesso (record CO180-00321)
- Como e il suo Lago, La chiesa di San Giovanni a Bellagio
- SIUSA, Parrocchia di San Giovanni Battista di Bellagio
- Bellagio Lake Como, Chiesa di San Giovanni Battista
- myLakeComo, Tour of the hamlets of Bellagio
- Wikipedia, Chiesa di San Giovanni (Bellagio) entry.
