Chiesa del Sacro Cuore

On the tree-lined little square at the centre of the Piani Resinelli plateau, high above Lake Como, stands the Church of the Sacred Heart: begun in the First World War as a shrine for those lost to the mountains, and still the spiritual landmark of Abbadia Lariana's high ground.

Why it matters

Don Carlo Raspini, parish priest of Abbadia Lariana, commissioned the church from a 1915 project; it was completed about two years later and inaugurated on 12 August 1917, during the war. The design came from the Milanese architect Paolo Mezzanotte, and the building was consecrated to the divine Heart of Jesus expressly to obtain protection over the homeland and its soldiers. From the start it served as a "Sacrario per i caduti della Montagna" — a shrine for those who died in the mountains — which fixed its bond with the alpinists and excursionists of the Grigna.

What to notice

• The compact Greek-cross body with its two apses, the result of a later enlargement of Mezzanotte's original design; - The position on the plateau's tree-lined square, ringed by excursion routes rather than houses, at roughly 1,300 metres. - The memorial character: a shrine to the mountain dead, not a village chapel, which its wartime dedication explains. -

Context and history

This little building is part of the wave of votive foundations the First World War left across the Italian mountains. Its centenary was marked by the parish in 2017, a hundred years after the 1917 inauguration, and Mezzanotte himself followed the later expansion works.