Chiesa di San Giovanni Battista (Pieve di Tremosine)

The church of San Giovanni Battista stands at the heart of Pieve, where the medieval baptismal church from which the whole Tremosine territory took its name was rebuilt in the later sixteenth century. A Romanesque tower of around the year 1000 survives beside an interior of inlaid choir stalls, painted altarpieces and a candle tradition of 365 flames.

Why it matters

Tremosine’s parish church stands in Pieve, the hamlet named for the historic baptismal church that served the surrounding territory. The present church of San Giovanni Battista stands on an older sacred site. Its Romanesque bell tower, dating to around 1000, survives from an earlier building. The interior brings together woodcarving, painting and stucco by artists of the Garda and Giudicarie districts.

What to notice

The Romanesque bell tower beside the church is the only visible survivor of the medieval building. Its lintel bears a painting associated with a tradition of reconciliation among local communities. A single nave opens onto a main altar and six minor altars, beneath which priests of Tremosine were once buried. The altarpiece of the birth of San Giovanni Battista, painted by Francesco Barbieri, sits among stucco decoration and seventeenth- and eighteenth-century canvases; a seventeenth-century altarpiece by Giuliano Glissenti is also recorded. The wooden choir has floral inlay; early-eighteenth-century work by Giacomo Lucchini of Castel Condino includes the organ casing, confessionals and sacristy furnishings. The devotional apparatus of the Sacri Tridui combines painted scenery with 365 candles, a distinctive feature of a longstanding Tremosine tradition.

Context and history

Local tradition associates the site with an earlier temple dedicated to the Celtic god Bergimo; accounts of the first Christian community here vary. A Romanesque church with a detached baptistery, dedicated to Santa Maria, is documented in a bull of Pope Urban III of 1186. Around 1570 that building was demolished, and between 1570 and 1593 the present nave rose; the church, first dedicated to Santa Maria Assunta, was officially re-dedicated to San Giovanni Battista, patron of the borgo, in the seventeenth century — the dedication is dated to 1633. Later centuries added the bells and organ of 1800, a post-war restoration, and the layered interior described above. The historic pieve gave its name to the hamlet and the surrounding territory.