The church of Santa Maria, in Cantù, began as the church of a Benedictine convent of nuns founded in 1093 by Alberto da Prezzate. From the thirteenth century the convent received young women from the wealthy families of Cantù and from the nobility of Como and Milan, and in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the protection of those families and its many landholdings made a new church possible, in place of the older Romanesque one, probably with a nave and two aisles. The design was by the architect Gerolamo Quadrio; work began in 1665 and on his death, in 1679, direction passed to his son Giovanni Battista. A date on the drum shows that in 1680 construction was already well advanced.
What to see
The plan is central and octagonal, made of alternating straight and curved walls which, with the presbytery, the entrance and the two side altars, form a cross. Eight free-standing columns carry the cylindrical lantern tower and the dome. The brick façade was left unfinished: the stone portal, by Giovanni Battista Quadrio, is topped by a shell from which two garlands spread.
Inside is a large altarpiece by Grazio Cossali, of 1596, which comes from the destroyed Dominican church of San Giovanni in Pedemonte in Como: it shows the Virgin and Child, Saint Hyacinth, Adalbert bishop of Como, two Dominican friars and two donors, and is framed by eighteen episodes from the life of Saint Hyacinth.
Visiting
With the Napoleonic suppressions the convent came to an end in 1798 and became a barracks; the church stayed closed to worship until 1839, and much of its furnishing was lost. The former convent, bought by the town council at the start of the twentieth century, was first a school and is now the town hall. The church's opening times should be checked with the parish or the town council.
Our editors' tip
Three inscriptions record the transfer, in 1690, of the bones of Agnese «de Burgundi», the first prioress chosen by Alberto da Prezzate: it is to her that tradition attributes the arrival in Cantù of the lace that bears the town's name.
