The church of San Pietro stands outside the centre of Cerano, near the cemetery, on the road that leads to the Ticino. It was probably built at the end of the twelfth century or the beginning of the thirteenth: by 1347 the church is already named as the benefice of a Tornielli. Despite baroque and neoclassical interventions, the original layout has remained almost unaltered.
What to see
It is a building of three naves of four bays each, with a Gothic transept and lantern tower. The side naves have ribbed cross vaults and the piers are of brick, the material of this plain. Outside, the front is plain and gabled, with three portals and small arches; behind it rises the brick bell tower. On the high altar is a sixteenth-century icon of the Virgin nursing the Child.
Visiting
In the sixteenth century the church went through a decline, so much so that bishop Serbelloni entrusted its care to the Confraternity of the Visitation. It was the confraternity that had the frescoes painted on the front, which time has since worn away. It is the typical course of a church that loses its main function and survives because someone takes it on: here the handover is documented, with names and dates.
Our editors' tip
The oddest thing in this church is not a saint. It is a fresco showing Diogenes, the Greek philosopher, holding a scroll with the inscription Expello, that is, I drive out. What a Cynic philosopher is doing on the walls of a country church in the Novara plain is a question the source does not answer, and we shall not try either: it is worth looking for him and leaving the question open. The church stands on the road towards the Ticino, at the point where the village ends and the river begins, and it makes a walk worth taking.