Chiesa di San Nicolò da Bari

Above the lakefront villas of Gardone Riviera, in the older quarter of Gardone Sopra, the parish church of San Nicolò da Bari keeps the town's longest memory: a Christian community documented since the Middle Ages and an elegant eighteenth-century rebuilding by a Camaldolese architect, with canvases by Venetian masters on its altars.

Why it matters

This is the parish church of Gardone Riviera, and its story frames the town's. A parish at Gardone is recorded from the fourteenth century, when it separated from the pieve of Salò, and an inscription on the earlier church suggested a construction date of 1391. Growth of the lakeside community brought a grander vision: in 1730, at the wish of the parish priest don Paolo Simoni and with his parishioners' consent, the Camaldolese architect Paolo Soratini of Lonato (1682–1762), cardinal Querini's trusted designer, drew up the project for a larger church oriented towards the lake. Cardinal Angelo Maria Querini dedicated the new building on 23 June 1735, conferring the archpriestly title, and the works, including the square-based stone bell tower, reached completion around 1740.

What to notice

Within, the church opens as a single hall: one nave with side chapels attached, late-baroque in manner, its surfaces enlivened by relief work and mural painting. Work outwards from the altars: the Pentecoste canvas on the altar of Saints Feliciano and Zosimo is by Zenone Veronese; the high altarpiece gathering Saint Martin, Saint Michael, Saint Nicholas of Bari and the Brescian patrons Faustino and Giovita is attributed to Palma il Giovane; one canvas bears the signature of Andrea Celesti, and the Via Crucis stations were designed by Augusto di Lozia. Francesco Monti's three vault medallions — the battle of angels and demons, the Assumption of Mary and Saint Nicholas of Bari — close the decorative programme with a burst of eighteenth-century colour.

Context and history

The rebuilding of the 1730s did not end the church's story. In the late nineteenth century the parish priest don Bartolomeo Bellicini had side windows opened to brighten the interior. The old medieval church beside it survived as a dependent chapel, transformed in 1968 into the cappella feriale; its deteriorated frescoes were restored in 1981, and in 1986 the parish church itself was repainted and adapted to post-conciliar liturgical use. The 2004 earthquake, whose epicentre lay near Salò, damaged many buildings of the Garda shore, and the church needed structural consolidation in 2006-2007 before the choir was remodelled in 2013-2014 to its present form. The parish belongs today to the Diocese of Brescia's Garda zone within the pastoral unit Maria Madre della Speranza.