Chiesa di San Bartolomeo

Above the lakefront of Laglio, the hamlet of Torriggia keeps its own church, dedicated to the Apostle Bartholomew. Rebuilt around 1700 when the mountain settlement outgrew its earlier chapel, it gathers an 18th-century stucco interior, old paintings, and a carved wooden saint attributed to a Val Gardena hand.

Why it matters

Torriggia is the mountain half of the comune of Laglio, climbing from the Via Regina shore road towards the pastures below Monte Colmegnone, and its church has served that scattered community for centuries. The building is worth attention because it records, in a single modest structure, how a small lake hamlet grew: the regional heritage catalogue registers the present complex with a construction date of 1756, while the local parish tradition recalls a rebuilding in 1700 "in larger dimensions than the previous one, because of the growth of the population". Either way, the church you see today is an 18th-century village fabric, later touched up on its facade, and still the reference point of the frazione.

What to notice

Inside, the plan is a single nave with one side chapel on the right, dedicated to the Madonna del Rosario. The interior has eighteenth-century stuccoes framing the altarpiece, a wooden statue of Saint Bartholomew attributed to an artist of Val Gardena, and paintings from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Later twentieth-century frescoes are located near the presbytery. The bell tower, plastered with horizontal string courses, stands to the right of the presbytery rather than near the entrance.

Context and history

A church on this site is old: the heritage documentation notes that a building here was probably of ancient foundation and is recorded in the pastoral visits of the 16th century. The decisive event, though, is the early-18th-century reconstruction. Torriggia's population had risen, and the old church no longer sufficed; the new building of 1700 was set on a larger footprint. An inscription on the portal is dated 1756, the year the regional catalogue uses for the complex as it stands. The facade was renewed in 1929, and the Via Crucis kept inside was blessed in 1781.

For most of its history this was effectively the parish church of the frazione; today the Diocese of Como lists Torriggia within the parish of San Giorgio in Laglio, in the pastoral community of the Santissima Trinità that groups Brienno, Carate Urio, Laglio and Moltrasio. The church therefore belongs to a small, close network of sacred buildings on this stretch of the western shore — the archpriestal San Giorgio by the lake, the domed San Gerolamo at the end of the Via Crucis, and this church of the mountain quarter.