Chiesa di Santa Maria Assunta

Riva del Garda's parish life centres on the Church of Santa Maria Assunta, which fronts Piazza Cavour a step from the lake. A pieve documented by 1106 and rebuilt in baroque form between 1728 and 1742, it keeps the town's religious art, from Craffonara's Assunta altarpiece to a campanile borrowed from the old walls.

Why it matters

The Church of Santa Maria Assunta is the seat of the parish and the Riva e Ledro pastoral zone. The building reflects nine centuries of local history: a place of worship first recorded in the early twelfth century and remodelled in the eighteenth. Its Baroque facade faces Piazza Cavour.

What to notice

Nine Baroque altars line the single nave, dressed in polychrome stucco. Behind the high altar hangs the large Assunta painting by Giuseppe Craffonara, the Riva-born artist of the early nineteenth century, and at the fourth altar on the left the church keeps its most cherished image, the Addolorata. A side chapel of the Madonna dei Miracoli was added in the 1690s and absorbed into the eighteenth-century rebuilding. The church’s bell tower originated as the gate-tower of San Michele and was incorporated into the church; its bells were recast in 1920.

Context and history

The pieve of Riva is documented in a deed of 19 June 1106. The later Baroque church includes the Suffragio side chapel. The present building is an eighteenth-century reconstruction: work on the new church ran from 1728 to 1742, and it was consecrated in 1747. The former name "Santa Maria Vecchia" survives on the little Piazzetta Craffonara at the church's south side, where a bust of the painter Craffonara (1790-1837) by the sculptor Francesco Trentini stands beside an ancient column from the destroyed predecessor. Its elevation to arcipretale gave the church the local standing of Riva’s “duomo”.