• Art & Culture

A treasure hunt in Lombardy

Ten masterpieces for an outing in Lombardy away from the usual routes. Choose with us where to start your Treasure Hunt!

from IN-LOMBARDIA.IT

From the extraordinary frescoes by Romanino at Pisogne, on Lake Iseo, to the Rotonda di San Tomé in Almenno San Bartolomeo, in the province of Bergamo. To guide us on this journey through beauty we have a young scholar in the history of art, Jacopo Veneziani, a PhD student at the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne in Paris.

In the coming months, Jacopo will also accompany us on our Facebook, Instagram and Twitter profiles with a suggestion a day. And an invitation to participate actively in our treasure hunt by sharing your images on Instagram of monuments, villas, museums, churches, frescoes... scattered throughout the region. Here is the hashtag #TesoriinLombardia #inLombardia.

Here your will our top ten tips! Will you join us?

1. Sanctuary of the Beata Vergine dei Miracoli, Saronno (Varese)
In the Sanctuary a spectacular dome frescoed by Gaudenzio Ferrari. Between 1535 and 1545, the artist painted dozens of musician angels on the sides of the dome. A harmonious beauty to evoke the music of Paradise.
2. Rotonda di San Tomè, Almenno San Bartolomeo (Bergamo)
Dedicated to Saint Bartholomew, the building was built in Romanesque style in the first half of the twelfth century. Inside, surrounded by columns and capitals recovered from an earlier religious building from the Frankish period, it is like being in a nest. A nest of solid stones that have striven towards the light for centuries.
3. Baptistery, Castiglione Olona (Varese)
Realised by Masolino da Panicale in 1435 for Cardinal Branda Castiglioni, the frescoes in the Baptistery are the result of a friendship between the artist and the humanist that began in Florence ten years earlier and of which, today, we are still the witnesses.
4. Rock engravings park, Grosio (Sondrio)
Located in the Valtelline, the Rupe Magna in the heart of the Park presents over 5,000 engravings made between the end of the Neolithic (fourth millennium BC) and the Iron Age (5th century BC). The perfect synthesis between history, art and landscape.
5. Church of Santa Maria della Neve, Pisogne (Brescia)
A hidden masterpiece that reveals itself to patient travellers. We are on the Brescia side of Lago d’Iseo. Passing in front of this small church one does not imagine that the porthole at the centre of the sober façade illuminates a powerful cycle of frescoes by Romanino (1534).
6. Covered road, Vigevano (Pavia)
A diffident character, Luchino Visconti always wanted to feel safe. In 1347 he had the Castle of Vigevano connected to the Rocca Vecchia, which used to overlook the countryside, via a “Covered road”. A masterpiece of military engineering, unique in Europe, this structure is 167 metres long and 7 metres wide.
7. Oratorio Suardi, Trescore Balneario (Bergamo)
A place to visit slowly, to observe meticulously as if it were a precious gem. Dedicated to the stories of Saint Barbara and Saint Brigid, the Oratory was frescoed in 1524 by Lorenzo Lotto in the property of the Suardi counts.
8. Monastery of San Salvatore, Capo di Ponte, Valle Camonica
Abandoned in the thirteenth century, taken over by animals in the sixteenth century, sold after the French Revolution: the ancient monastery in the Valle Camonica, already mentioned in a papal bull of 1095, has had a troubled history. Today only the Romanesque church remains.
9. Visconti di Modrone Mausoleum, Cassago Brianza (Lecco)
Surrounded by cypress trees, the white spires of the Mausoleum, in Carrara marble, have dominated the Lecco landscape since 1890. The effect is deliberate: the Visconti family, thirty-three members of which are buried here, asked architect Giovanni Ceruti to reproduce the grandeur of Milan’s Duomo.
Photo IG: artydiego
10. Church of the Certosa di Garegnano, Milan
Imagine the young Daniele Crespi satisfied, immersed in the light of the Certosa church: he had just finished the glorious cycle of frescoes that we can still admire today. He died the following year at only thirty-two, killed by the terrible plague epidemic of 1630.

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