The parish church of Borgosesia stands in piazza Martiri, and before it, on the same ground, there was a Roman burial area. In the Middle Ages the pieve of Saints Peter and Paul counted for a good deal: bishop Carlo Bascapè calls it the mother church of every church in the valley, the one the others depended on. The building you see today is the seventeenth-century rebuilding, with the bell tower reworked in the same century.
What to see
The front faces west and is gabled in steps, divided by a string course into two registers. The lower one, wider and Ionic, has at its centre a projecting body marked out by four half-columns, with the main door, panels and two niches holding the statues of Saint Peter and Saint Paul; on the wings stand the old side entrances, later walled up. Above, a semicircular window and the triangular pediment. The bell tower is of stone, square in plan, its belfry opening a Serlian window on each side under an eight-sided roof resting on the drum. The neoclassical front is of 1852: to build it the old portico was pulled down.
Visiting
Inside, the plan is a Latin cross and there is a single nave, with side chapels opening through round arches and communicating with one another; the walls carry pilasters supporting the ribs of the vaults. The presbytery is raised by six steps and closes in a semicircular apse. Three works are worth seeking out: the panel by Bernardino Lanino of 1539, with the Virgin and Child among Saints Gaudentius, Christopher, John the Baptist, Peter and Paul; the frescoes by Tarquinio Grassi of 1690; and the two statues of Saints Apollonia and Lucy, carved at the end of the seventeenth century.
Our editors' tip
Look at the Lanino panel with the date in mind. In 1539 Gaudenzio Ferrari was still alive and Lanino had worked in his workshop: in Valsesia that artistic kinship can be read everywhere, from the sacri monti to the parish churches on the valley floor, and here you touch it in a single panel. The town is tied to this church for lighter reasons too: the patrons' feast, on 29 June, is its great day.