Chiesa dei Santi Martiri

In Piazza San Graziano, the Chiesa dei Santi Martiri — known in Arona as San Graziano — is the town's most storied church. Romanesque in origin and Gothic in body, it guards the relics of Arona's patron saints and preserves the memory of San Carlo Borromeo's last Mass.

Why it matters

Two stories converge in this one building. The first is Arona's own: the church preserves the relics of the town's patron martyrs — Graziano, Felino, Carpoforo and Fedele — which are carried in public veneration each 13 March during the Tredicino, the festival that defines the civic year. The second is Europe-wide: San Carlo Borromeo, born at the town's Rocca in 1538, celebrated his final Mass here before returning to Milan, where he died of fever on the evening of 3 November 1584 — a fact recorded by the official site of the Colosso di San Carlo. The church connects the history of Arona with the wider story of San Carlo Borromeo around Lake Maggiore.

What to notice

The façade is Baroque, while the walls alongside are fifteenth-century work in squared blocks of serizzo stone, a lakeside building custom that helps date the body of the church. Inside, the high altar is a marble work with bas-reliefs of the Martyrs, and a late fifteenth-century altarpiece by Ambrogio da Fossano, known as il Bergognone, hangs among the church's treasures. The stained glass rewards attention — one decorated panel of 1502 survives in the San Carlo chapel. Relics of San Carlo himself are kept in a case lined with precious eighteenth-century silk, including his pastoral staff. Behind the church stands the Beolchi Ossuary Chapel, a seventeenth-century example of Lombard Baroque with decorative wrought-iron screens and traces of still-legible frescoes, and in the small square a fountain of 1852 completes the composition.

Context and history

The church's origins reach back to a monastery: remains of a Benedictine abbey, founded in the second half of the tenth century, survive in the adjacent municipal building, and the church served as the abbey's place of worship. Its dedication to the Holy Martyrs reflects the translation of the relics of the soldier-saints Graziano, Felino, Carpoforo and Fedele, who became Arona's patrons. The building grew by accretion across the centuries — the current structure is the result of four distinct construction phases — layering Romanesque roots, Gothic structure, fifteenth-century stone walls and a Baroque face. The Borromeo connection deepened in the sixteenth century: in 1576 Cardinal Carlo Borromeo personally intervened to restore to the people of Arona part of the relics of the martyrs Fedele and Carpoforo, and tradition records that he said his last Mass at this altar before his final journey to Milan. The relic tradition remains alive in the annual Tredicino festival.