Collegiata dei Santi Candido e Corbiniano

San Candido’s collegiate church grew from a Benedictine monastery founded in 769. The Romanesque basilica, built in its present form around 1280, preserves a Creation fresco cycle, a carved Crucifixion group and a medieval crypt.

Why it matters

The monastery became a collegiate chapter around 1143, when work began on a church for the new community. The basilica’s scale and Romanesque form reflect the importance of the chapter in the upper Puster Valley. A tower was added in the early fourteenth century.

What to notice

The dome over the crossing carries a Romanesque Creation cycle in which the Creator appears in six scenes. A carved Crucifixion group, dating to about 1250, stands in the choir. The south portal includes a fresco attributed to Michael Pacher, dated around 1450, depicting the church’s patrons with Emperor Otto I. A fifteenth-century Gothic atrium preserves a large projecting rib associated in local tradition with the giant Haunold.

Context and history

In the seventeenth century, parts of the interior were adapted in Baroque style. The Romanesque crypt was filled in 1874 and its columns reused in the cemetery portico. For the monastery’s 1,200th anniversary in 1969, the crypt was reconstructed and the dome fresco uncovered, restoring the church’s medieval features.