Tourist Attraction in Lecco:
Chiesa dei Santi Materno e Lucia

"The convent was located outside, and in the face of the entrance to the land, with the road that leads from Lecco to Bergamo." (Alessandro Manzoni, The Betrothed, Chapter IV, 1840) The church of Santi Materno and Lucia and the former convent of the Capuchin friars (called Fra Cristoforo) are located in the district of Pescarenico in Lecco, in Piazza Padre Cristoforo. In 1810 the convent was suppressed, it was declared in the national monument by King Vittorio Emanuele Terzo, in 1940. Simultaneously at the villa of Manzoni al Caleotto. The temple, consecrated in 1600, was in principle the place of worship of the adjacent Convento dei frati Cappuccini of Pescarenico, made famous by the literary masterpiece of Manzoni, in the novel I Promessi Sposi, who explicitly mentions it as the conventual seat of Fra Christopher. The church was built in 1576 by Hurtado de Mendoza, a knight of Santiago and governor of the plain of Lecco, at the behest of San Carlo Borromeo as a temple for the adjacent Capuchin Monastery. It was dedicated, together with the church, to San Francesco d'Assisie entrusted to the Franciscan friars, who used it as accommodation for the confreres coming from Bergamo who went to Como or Domaso. The building underwent various transformations starting from the Baroque age, becoming a barracks for the French troops in 1789. In 1810 the convent was suppressed and sold to private citizens at the behest of Napoleon Bonaparte and the church, which in the meantime was dedicated to San Materno, it was affected by further renovations during the nineteenth century. From the years 1824 and 1834, many works date back, including the reconstruction of the façade traditionally referred to the architect Giuseppe Bovara from Lecco and later also dedicated to Santa Lucia, presumably as a tribute to Manzoni. The temple was further restored in 1981. Among the well-known figures who attended the parish church were Antonio Stoppani and the members of the Manzoni family including Alessandro himself. The building, which not coincidentally overlooks the square dedicated to the Manzonian figure of Father Cristoforo, presents the typical structure of the Franciscan churches, characterized by a simple nave with a gable roof and transverse arches. The rectangular presbytery is dominated by a barrel vault, while the apse behind presents a quadrangular perimeter. The religious building, which dominates the square, is set back but still dominant on the adjacent Chapel of San Gregorio. The façade is represented by four decorative pilasters with an Ionic capital and a neo-classical gable pediment. Located centrally above the main door is a two-light window added to other two simple side. The entrance to the ancient Convent of the Capuchin friars is located on the right side of the church. On the side facing the church, the chapel on the left bears a memorial plaque in memory of the fallen in the two world wars; It serves as a base for the bell tower that was built during the twentieth century adding to the eighteenth-century triangular bell tower known as Campaniletto recently restored as damaged by lightning in 1713. On the opposite side of the square is an anonymous and neglected Ossuary of 1699 with a ferrata window inside which many human skulls are still visible, dating back to the Franciscan friars who died as a result of the Plague epidemic of 1630 over a small stone crack below that served as a collection of offers for the dead related to the terrible calamity also described by Manzoni in his novel. Word processing: Giovambattista Spagnuolo (Myooni)

Attractions in Lecco