The church of Santa Maria del Conforto is in Merano, in the Maia Bassa district, and is probably the oldest in the town. Its Romanesque origins are certain, between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, but it probably arose from the alteration of a small church of the eighth century. The first document is much later: in 1273 Meinhard II gave it, with other property, to the abbey of Stams. A branch of the Rio Nova, which was not yet confined to its present bed, damaged it several times, and the church was altered: in the fifteenth century the apse was rebuilt in Gothic forms, in 1624 the nave roof was raised with a barrel vault, in the eighteenth century the organ loft was made, in 1824 the porch, and in 1889 the Baroque spire of the bell tower was replaced with today's octagonal one.
What to see
Inside, on the north wall, are Romanesque frescoes of the twelfth century, discovered in 1967 during a restoration. They are probably by a Venetian artist and show Byzantine influences: they tell stories from the life of Mary, including a rare Dormitio Mariae, the death of the Virgin. The fresco of the birth of Jesus is of the fourteenth century, while the vault has a Baroque Assumption by J. A. Puellacher.
Outside is a fourteenth-century cycle, with evident influences from Giotto. At the top five saints, with St Sigismund in the centre, St Catherine and St Dorothy on the right, St Anthony Abbot and St Leonard on the left; in the centre an archangel Michael; on the right a Crucifixion; on the left St Nicholas, the town's patron, and St Erasmus.
Visiting
The external frescoes can be seen without going in. For the interior, opening and Mass times should be checked with the parish.
Our editors' tip
Lower down on the outside wall there was also a Triumph of Death. Little of it remains: it was ruined by the gravestones of the cemetery that once surrounded the church.
