San Dalmazzo is the parish church of Cuorgnè. The first record of the pieve, which stood in the Villa quarter outside the walls, dates from 1154; in the second half of the sixteenth century the building was no longer enough and was rebuilt to a design by Marianno de Marianni of Lugano. Then came the unexpected: on the first of September 1804 one of the pillars carrying the vault suddenly gave way, the whole pieve became unstable and had to be demolished.
What to see
In its place rose the present church, built to a design by Andrea Cattaneo between 1805 and 1810 and consecrated on 18 November of that same year. The front is stepped and at its centre has a tetrastyle porch with Ionic columns carrying the triangular pediment: it was added in 1820, ten years after the consecration. In 1825 a side chapel was raised to hold the image of the Madonna della Rivassola, a fifteenth-century copy of a Byzantine depiction of the Virgin.
Visiting
The plan is a Latin cross, with four bays in the central nave and three in the side ones. Among the works are the altarpiece of the martyrdom of Saint Dalmatius painted by Giovanni Comandù, the frescoes with the saint's life by Nicola Fava, the Four Evangelists in the pendentives of the dome-shaped vault, and a painting of Saint Teresa from the workshop of Guido Reni. The font carries a relief of the Baptism of Christ.
Our editors' tip
Ask to hear the organ if the chance arises: it was built by Carlo Vegezzi Bossi in 1894, one of the great names of Italian organ building between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In a church less than two hundred years old, the instrument carries the most illustrious signature.