Chiesa di Sant'Ambrogio

The parish church of Lierna pairs a Romanesque bell tower dated to the early eleventh century with a late-baroque interior, frescoes by Umberto Marigliani and a Via Crucis of fourteen chapels painted by Luigi Tagliaferri that starts beside the church.

Why it matters

Sant'Ambrogio is the church that organises Lierna's religious and civic life: every other place of worship in the parish, from the oratory at Castello to the chapels of Sornico, Casate and Villa, depends on it. Its dedication to Milan's patron saint records the town's medieval bond with the city, which held Lierna through the monastery of San Dionigi until 1202. The detached bell tower, dated by the parish to the beginning of the eleventh century, is described as one of the oldest Romanesque towers in Lombardy, and the surrounding complex gathers nearly nine centuries of local art, from a 1628 Valtellinese altarpiece to twentieth-century vault frescoes.

What to notice

The tower stands it stands slightly rotated against the church's axis, a trace of the older building it once served. On the facade, a Liberty-style stained-glass window by Luigi Fontana of Milan shows Saint Ambrose. Inside, the vault carries five medallions painted in 1935 by Umberto Marigliani with episodes from the saint's life, lunettes of prophets and evangelists, and an apse medallion of the Sermon on the Mount. The 1628 altarpiece of the Madonna of the Rosary with Saints Dominic and Catherine is the work of Giovan Battista Macolino, a painter from Valtellina. Two large anonymous canvases brought from Bellagio, an Adoration of the Magi and a Massacre of the Innocents, flank the choir, and the carved wooden choir stalls were made in 1806 by Ambrogio Barindelli.

Context and history

A chapel stood here by 1026, when Archbishop Ariberto of Milan granted Lierna to the monastery of San Dionigi; only the Romanesque tower is likely to survive from that early church. Lierna remained a dependency of Milan until 1202, which explains the Ambrosian dedication. The parish was formally erected in 1619 by the bishop of Como Filippo Archinti, with Don Antonio Anzani as first pastor, and the present church was built in 1626 and consecrated a year later by Bishop Lazzaro Carafino. A major enlargement in 1778 reshaped the interior in the late-baroque manner then current around the lake and raised the bell tower. The marble high altar, installed in the early nineteenth century, holds relics of Saints Colombano, Carlo, Perpetua and Diletto. Marigliani's frescoes arrived in 1935, and a full pictorial restoration followed the liturgical reforms of 1972.