Chiesa di Santa Margherita

A donation deed of 1327 names Santa Margarita de Longaplave — the earliest written trace of the church that still serves Sappada as its parish. Rebuilt in the late eighteenth century in late-Baroque form, it gathers the village's sacred art around one nave, from sixteenth-century wooden saints to frescoes painted when the twentieth century was young.

Why it matters

A 1327 record documents the church of Santa Margarita and an organized Christian community in the valley. The building was rebuilt between 1777 and 1779 by master builder Tommaso da Lienz and remains Sappada's parish church. The subsidiary churches of the borgate, including Sant'Osvaldo at Cima Sappada, belong to the parish. Santa Margherita stands in the historic village of Sappada Vecchia.

What to notice

The late-Baroque rebuild gave the church long sides articulated in two series of four round arches, with niches for side altars between the pillars. The bell tower ends in an octagonal turret crowned by a shaped spire. The interior is a single hall with the presbytery at the far end.

Frescoes by Francesco Barazzutti of Gemona, painted in 1906–1907, cover the presbytery and walls: the Assumption, the Fathers of the Church, the Crucifixion, the Evangelists, the Death of Saint Joseph and the Martyrdom of Saint Margaret. The high altar, made in 1915 by the Cavallini brothers of Pove with sculptures by Arturo Ferraroni of Cremona, frames the oldest treasures: wooden statues of Saint Margaret and Saint Catherine of Alexandria, carved around 1540 and attributed to Michele Parth. Behind the altar hangs the altarpiece of 1802 by Johann Renzler of St. Lorenzen, showing the Trinity with the Virgin and Saint Margaret — a reminder of how closely this valley belonged to the German-speaking Alpine world. A painting of the Madonna of Einsiedeln, bought in the second half of the nineteenth century from the Swiss Benedictine abbey, records the village's pilgrim devotion.

Context and history

The sequence of dates tells the village's story: a church first written down in 1327 under a Latinised name joining Saint Margaret to the Longa Plavis, the long Piave meadows; enlargement in 1666 as the community grew; a full Baroque rebuild in the late 1770s under the Lienz master builder; the addition of stained glass in 1940 and new altar steps in 1943; and the Barazzutti fresco campaign of 1906–07, which gave the interior its present pictorial programme. That continuity — one church, many centuries — marks the history of Sappada's religious life. The parish of Santa Margherita still heads the religious life of the destination's borgate, each of which keeps its own chapel, and its patroness's feast anchors the village calendar.