The collegiate church of San Gaudenzio is the main church of Varallo and stands on a small rocky promontory in the middle of the town, from which it dominates the square dedicated to Victor Emmanuel II. It is named after Saint Gaudentius, first bishop of Novara; a portico running around it is documented as early as 1248.
What to see
Its mass is imposing and the position makes it still more theatrical: the building rests on substructures partly underground, is reached by a stairway and is ringed by an elegant loggia of twenty-eight arches. The interior is baroque, with a single nave, eighteenth-century altars, two carved and painted singing galleries and side chapels. Of its thirteenth-century appearance only part of the Romanesque bell tower survives.
Visiting
The apse basin holds the great piece: the polyptych by Gaudenzio Ferrari, six panels with the Madonna and Child, Saint Catherine and Saint Joseph, Saint Peter, Saint Gaudentius, the Pietà, Saint Mark and Saint John the Baptist, painted between 1517 and 1520 and considered one of the most significant works of his maturity; the marble frame around it is baroque, added much later.
Our editors' tip
Look up, then look back. On the dome and the pendentives are the Four Evangelists and the Glory of Saint Gaudentius, painted in 1702 by Carlo Bartolomeo Borsetti; on the entrance wall, instead, is Saint Gaudentius extinguishing the fire of the city of Novara, by Giovanni Antonio de Groot. Beside the side entrance a nursing Madonna survives, a fifteenth-century remnant.