The monumental Parish Church of Baceno, in Romanesque-Gothic style, is named after San Gaudenzio, the first Bishop of Novara (337-417). The oldest documents that testify to the existence of a chapel in the place where the church now stands date back to the early 11th century. Carlo Bascapè, Bishop of Novara from 1593 to 1615, in his “Sacred Novaria” cites a document attesting the existence in the Baceno of a chapel donated to the canons of Santa Maria di Novara by Gualberto of Pombia, Bishop of Novara from 1032 to 1039.
The chapel, built with a rectangular plan in Lombard Romanesque style, was located where the presbytery is currently located. The first expansion of the building, datable between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, changed its orientation and gave shape to the portion now represented by the central nave and the Romanesque facade between the two pilasters. In 1326 the cleric Signebaldo de Baceno erected, at the point where the entrance to the primitive chapel, the Chapel of the Madonna, stood.
The marked spread of Christianity in the Antigorius Valley later determined the need for a new expansion. On the occasion of the marriage, in 1486, of Bernardino de Baceno, the imperial Valvassore of Antigorio and Formazza, with the noblewoman Ludovica Trivulzio, daughter of the representative of the Duke of Milan in Ossola, the Church of San Gaudenzio was embellished with the construction of the current side naves, in Gothic style.
In the last decade of the 16th century, with the new norms established by the Council of Trent, new interventions began within the Church of San Gaudenzio, whose structure was significantly modified with the insertion of clear baroque elements, which since then have been in harmony with Romanesque and Gothic.
At the center of the Romanesque stone facade of the monumental Church of San Gaudenzio stands the portal, dominated by a rose window and flanked by the large fresco of San Cristoforo, painted in 1542. The imposing bell tower, with a square base and with a side of seven meters, is 31 meters high; the octagonal cusp was added in the seventeenth century.
The large interior with five naves, divided by four sets of columns, is characterized by a marked slope floor (almost a meter the difference in height from the beginning of the nave at the base of the steps of the presbytery), composed of serizzo slabs.
The side aisles are formed by ten beautifully frescoed cruises; in addition to the imposing ciborium of the main altar, they finally enrich the Church of San Gaudenzio seven side altars and the sixteenth-century Battistero in white marble and wood, with walls and frescoed vaults.
The oldest and most valuable artistic portion of the building is the Chapel of the Madonna (now of the Rosary), located in the nave on the right of the altar, whose wonderful frescoes are dedicated to the life of Mary.
In the presbytery, on the right, the great Crucifixion (1542), the work of Antonio Zanetti called the Bugnate, below the figures of Adam and Eve, while on the barrel vault is represented the dragon by the seven heads of the Apocalypse; the cruise of the presbytery is enclosed by three finely frescoed arches with prophets and hisbys.
The magnificence of the Church of San Gaudenzio di Baceno, whose architectural structure, at sunset, is enhanced by a wise lighting, cannot fail to affect the eyes and hearts of visitors.
Source: visitbaceno.it
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