Basilica di San Fedele

On the square that once held Como's grain market, the Basilica di San Fedele shows the Romanesque building craft of the Comacine masters at its most inventive. Scholars still argue over its exact date, placing it around 1120, but its curious three-naved body grafted onto a central plan makes it a touchstone for the study of the Lombard Romanesque.

Why it matters

San Fedele descends from an earlier paleo-Christian church dedicated to Santa Eufemia, and its dedication was changed after the relics of Saint Fidelis arrived. The building is a key monument of Lombard Romanesque: its layout — three irregular naves absorbed into what is essentially a central, transept-heavy plan — echoes the Palatine Chapel at Aachen and influenced later church designs across the Po valley.

What to notice

The cusp-shaped Portale del Drago, to the right of the apse, was carved between the eleventh and twelfth centuries and bears medieval bas-reliefs commonly identified as the prophet Habakkuk and Daniel among the lions. Roman fragments were reused in the masonry above the rear portal, and a carved capital serves as a holy-water basin.

The matronei, or galleries above the side aisles, were closed with arches in the sixteenth century to make room for canvases and stuccoes. Sculptural decoration in the choir, attributed to the Magistri cumacini, includes zoomorphic figures, monsters and griffins. The church also preserves the Gothic ark of San Fedele, dated 1365, and thirteenth- and fourteenth-century votive frescoes.

The octagonal tiburio over the crossing was raised in 1805, and the side chapels were added in 1807–1808. The facade and bell tower were heavily restored in the early twentieth century — so heavily that critics coined the term neo-Romanesque for the result.

Context and history

The site's religious use goes back to a seventh-century paleo-Christian basilica of Santa Eufemia; by tradition the relics of San Fedele were translated here in 964, and the present Romanesque church was probably begun around 1120, following the footprint of the earlier building. Completion was slow, as was common for the period.

Later centuries kept adjusting the fabric: seventeenth-century builders vaulted the central nave with a barrel vault and reworked the side apses. In the early 1900s, restorer Antonio Giussani rebuilt the facade (1914) with its central rose window and partially rebuilt the leaning bell tower (1905), which had been reconstructed in 1271 after collapsing in the 1117 earthquake. These interventions explain why the church today presents a blend of authentic Romanesque structure and early twentieth-century reconstruction.

The piazza itself preserves a memory of civic life: it hosted the grain market, placing commerce literally in the shadow of the basilica.