Parrocchiale di Santa Maria Assunta

At Staffa, the administrative heart of Macugnaga, the Parish Church of Santa Maria Assunta — locally the Chiesa Nuova — has been the valley's principal church since the early eighteenth century. Alpine baroque in local stone and wood, its gilded altarpieces, baroque canvases and historic organ counterbalance the older medieval church down the valley.

Why it matters

Every Walser valley organised its religious life around one parish church, and Macugnaga's role passed to this building in the early eighteenth century: a meadow at Staffa was chosen in 1696, the foundations were laid in 1709, and the church was solemnly dedicated in 1717, though the municipal record dates the present building to 1754. The municipality's account calls it "Alpine baroque": outside, a restrained stone-and-timber facade suited to the mountain economy; inside, the full baroque programme of a carved and gilded high altar showing the Assumption of the Virgin, frescoes and paintings of scenes from the lives of Mary and Christ, and a historic pipe organ still played for services and concerts. Locals traditionally call it the Chiesa Nuova — the "new church" — a name that only makes sense beside its counterpart, the Chiesa Vecchia of Santa Maria further down the valley, whose medieval fabric marks where the community worshipped for centuries before.

The interior also preserves the valley's own artistic story: the Adoration of the Magi, painted between 1720 and 1726 by Bartolomeo Jachini, a Macugnaga painter from Stabioli, hangs opposite the Nativity that the Vigezzo painter Giuseppe Mattia Borgnis completed in 1747 after Jachini's death — eighteenth-century canvases that bind the parish interior to the artistic tradition of the valley and its neighbours, in the same prosperous decades as the valley's gold-mining activity.

What to notice

• The high altar: a carved, gilded wooden composition of the Assumption with statuary — the centrepiece of the interior and the best single example of the "Alpine baroque" blend of mountain material and metropolitan ornament.
• The frescoes and canvas paintings of Marian and Christological scenes along the nave.
• The historic pipe organ — a first instrument was installed in 1751, with later replacements — used in services and concerts; its presence reflects the musical life of the parish.
• The Adoration of the Magi of Bartolomeo Jachini (1720–1726) and the Nativity completed by Giuseppe Mattia Borgnis in 1747, the great canvases flanking the presbytery.
• The slender stone bell tower with its clock and bells — built from 1935 and inaugurated in 1937 as a memorial to Macugnaga's fallen of the First World War — the village's vertical landmark against the Monte Rosa wall; and the exterior itself, local stone and wood, the material signature of the Walser valley.

Context and history

Macugnaga's Walser community, traditionally established in the thirteenth century, worshipped for some five centuries at the old church by the Dorf. Two calamities reshaped that arrangement — the fire of 1639, which devastated much of the old settlement, and the flood of 1640 — and in 1691 the bishop of Novara encouraged the community to find a safer site for its parish church. The meadow at Staffa was chosen in 1696, the foundations were laid in 1709, and on 27 July 1717 the church, though not yet finished, was solemnly blessed and dedicated to the Beata Vergine Assunta and San Giuseppe; the municipal record dates the present building to 1754. In the style the municipality calls Alpine baroque, the baroque vocabulary of altars, frescoes and gilding was executed by regional craftsmen in local stone and wood. Work continued across the century — a first organ in 1751, the great timber roof rebuilt in 1759 under the Valsesian master Lorenzo Guala after snow damage, the balustrades of 1782 attributed to the Valsesian G. B. Gallo — and the present stone bell tower, begun in 1935 and inaugurated on 15 August 1937, is dedicated to the Macugnaghesi who fell in the First World War. The parish remains active today.

The eighteenth century was also a great era of the valley's gold mines, and the church's decoration belongs to the same prosperous decades: Pietro Antonio Lanti, a Macugnaga woodcarver remembered locally as the "Michelangelo of the Walser", filled the church with carved work between about 1720 and mid-century — the ambo of the high altar, the pulpit, the entrance doors, the statues of the Assunta and San Giuseppe and the confessional boxes. The church thus doubles as a ledger of the valley's economic and artistic history.