The church of San Francesco, in Saronno, was originally the parish church of San Pietro: a church with this title is mentioned on the site in 1154, and the building was rebuilt in 1297 with a convent attached. The origin of the Franciscan convent, dated to 1230, is linked by tradition to Saint Anthony of Padua passing through Saronno on the road to Varese. In 1570 Charles Borromeo, to settle a dispute between the friars and the parish priest, moved the parish to the church of Santi Pietro e Paolo, and this one was then dedicated to Saint Francis. Napoleon suppressed the convent in 1797: it became a barracks, and the church was used as a stable. It has been a national monument since 1931.
What to see
The church has a nave and two aisles, a seventeenth-century façade, a brick lantern tower and the bell tower. The nave has a coffered wooden ceiling, the aisles cross vaults. The presbytery is entirely frescoed in Baroque taste: in the vault the Triumph of the Eucharist by Tommaso Legnani, grandfather of Legnanino, at the sides two scenes of Moses, in the apse Saint Francis receiving the stigmata. Along the nave runs the cycle with the stories of Saints Francis and Anthony, commissioned in 1678 from Giovanni Ambrogio Legnani.
The side chapels were under the patronage of noble families of Saronno, as the coats of arms on the vaults show. In the chapel of the Rosary, the sixth on the left, the frescoes of the Mysteries are by Aurelio and Giovanni Pietro Luini, sons of Bernardino, from the mid-sixteenth century; in the chapel of the Pietà, the second on the left, is the wooden Lamentation by Andrea da Saronno, of 1515-1520.
Visiting
Opening and Mass times should be checked with the parish.
Our editors' tip
Before going in, look outside for the Roman altar, dated between the first and second centuries: the inscription reads «Quintus Cassius Mercator Deis Deabus», the dedication of Quintus Cassius Mercator to the gods and goddesses.
