Chiesa di San Michele Arcangelo

San Michele Arcangelo, Colonno's parish church, faces a small square opening onto Lake Como. Rebuilt in the nineteenth century, it incorporates traces of an earlier Romanesque building.

Why it matters

The church preserves more than one period of the village's religious history. Its later form stands alongside medieval fragments, connecting the lakeside settlement with an older architectural and devotional landscape.

What to notice

The relationship between church, square and water gives the building its particular setting. Traces of Romanesque fabric survive in the bell tower, while fragments of fresco on the back wall of the presbytery date from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. These painted remains are parts of an earlier decorative scheme, not a complete surviving cycle.

Context and history

The present church replaced a medieval predecessor on the same site during the nineteenth century. Its dedication to Michael the Archangel preserves the name of Colonno's parish within a village whose narrow lanes and closely grouped houses retain an older settlement pattern. Rebuilding changed the church substantially without removing every trace of its predecessor.