Chiesa Parrocchiale Ss. Pietro e Paolo

Beautiful church with many paintings

Mentioned in documents since 1172, it was renovated in the fifteenth century and again in the seventeenth century. The description of Bishop Ninguarda (1593) allows for a timely reconstruction of the Renaissance building, some aspects of which have been brought to light by the restorations of 1965-66. The church had a single nave with four transverse tympanum arches and an apse frescoed according to the traditional iconography of Christ in Majesty with the Evangelists and the Apostles. Along the walls the shallow side chapels opened, including that of the Virgin, the fourth on the left, partially recovered in 1965 with the relative frescoes signed by Sigismondo De Magistris, datable to the third decade of the sixteenth century. The church preserves other testimonies of the Renaissance decoration: the vault of the pronaos with the Doctors of the Church and the lunettes on the sides of the portal with the SS. Pietro e Paolo, painted towards the middle of the 16th century; a series of votive frescoes with Madonnas and Saints in the second and third sections on the right, some of which can be attributed to the local painter Battista da Musso; a Pietà in the external lunette of the side portal; the stained glass window with the Nativity, attributed to Domenico da Blevio, in the window of the last chapel on the left, whose lunette hides traces of frescoes behind the stuccoes; and finally the windows with the SS. Pietro e Paolo in the windows on the sides of the presbytery, the first datable to the end of the 15th century and the second to the first decade of the following century. The seventeenth-century renewal, in addition to involving the architectural structure of the church, also involved the decorative one, starting from the presbytery, with the Stories of SS. Peter and Paul, the Coronation of the Virgin and the Doctors of the Church of Fiammenghino and a rich stucco decoration. Behind the polychrome marble altar dated 1802 stands a large Crucifixion within a stucco altarpiece, between the SS. Peter and Paul. Work by Giovan Paolo Recchi around the years 1648-49 are instead the two chapels of S. Antonio and the Vergine del Rosario: the first, with the statue of S. Antonio between those of S. Carlo and S. Rocco, has frescoes with Stories of the three saints in rich stuccoes; the second, with the altarpiece of the Virgin in a triumph of stuccoes punctuated by small canvases with the Mysteries of the Rosary, is also completely frescoed with Stories of Mary, Saints and Prophets.