Collegiata prepositurale dei Santi Martino e Stefano

Behind the merchant houses of Tirano's old borgo stands the town's ancient collegiate church, titled to Saints Martin and Stephen yet known to everyone as San Martino, its Romanesque bell tower rising over streets that still follow the medieval plan. A Maciachini facade, a Serassi organ and centuries of layered art make it the city's counterweight to the basilica.

Why it matters

Long before the sanctuary made Tirano famous, this was the town's principal church, standing at the fork of two medieval streets with a broad sacred square in front. A church existed here by the tenth century, and the parish of San Martino still serves the historic centre of the Diocese of Como. The collegiate church anchors the historic merchant town, whose patron saint, Martin of Tours, appears on civic crests and on the facade of the basilica. Its bell tower, rising in eight orders of openings, is the most recognisable feature of the town skyline after the sanctuary's dome.

What to notice

The bell tower, dated to 1479 and described by the regional inventory as rising on twelfth-century fabric, has massive lower orders with single openings, paired and tripled openings above and a pyramidal spire. The nineteenth-century street facade is attributed to Carlo Maciachini; a pointed Gothic portal survives on the north side. Inside, the three-aisled hall has side chapels painted for the town's confraternities and families, and a semicircular apse. The Serassi organ dates to 1851–52; its carved case is credited to Count Ulisse Salis. A sundial dated 1674 is on the south wall.

Context and history

Accounts differ on the church's chronology: the municipal heritage itinerary records a thirteenth-century church extensively remade in the seventeenth century, the tourism portal notes an early twelfth-century widening of the nave, and the Ministry of Culture's catalogue dates the present building to 1589. The catalogue attributes the tower to the Valsolda workshop and describes it as built on older fabric. Its dignity grew with the town's: the parish was formally erected in 1589, and in 1629 the bishop of Como Lazzaro Carafino raised the church of San Martino to prepositural and collegiate rank with a college of six canons, while Tirano became the seat of a forane vicariate. The baroque remodelling gave the interior its present breadth, and the 1870s facade by Maciachini closed the ensemble in the taste of its day. Paintings by recognised Valtellinese and Lombard hands accumulated in the chapels, together forming a record of local devotion across several centuries.