The church of Santa Rita, or church of the Purification, is a Catholic place of worship in Legnano on corso Sempione, annexed to the private school Barbara Melzi, a former convent of Canossian nuns. Originally it was dedicated to the Purification; later it was named after Saint Rita.
What to see
It was the reference church for the district of Legnanello: Cardinal Andrea Carlo Ferrari raised it to a parish church on 13 August 1898, the day the parish of Legnanello was created, and it remained so until 1902, when the new church of the Santissimo Redentore was inaugurated. It was also cited in an inquiry of July 1586 by Cardinal Nicolò Sfondrati, the future Pope Gregory XIV, connected with the transfer of the Prepositura from Parabiago to Legnano. Today it is the private chapel of the Barbara Melzi institute.
The façade is plain, with a small portico and three large windows: the central one, rectangular and larger, was enriched with stuccoes in 1890, during restoration work, and the stuccoes were applied to the façade too; at the sides are two round windows with stucco festoons. The church was restored again in the nineteen-eighties and has a single nave. In the apse and presbytery are fine seventeenth-century frescoes by Francesco and Giovanni Battista Lampugnani.
Visiting
The church is on corso Sempione, annexed to the Barbara Melzi institute, and today it is a private chapel. The sources consulted give no opening hours or visiting arrangements: check them.
Our editors' tip
At Legnanello the feast of the Purification of Mary, Candlemas, on 2 February, is still deeply felt: in the past the year's brides confided their disappointments to one another with the saying in Legnano dialect «Caru ti, se mi 'l savévu, mai pü sa maridévu», that is «Dear, had I known, I would never have married», and the feast was renamed «Caru mi, Caru ti».
