Lecco

Pescarenico, Lecco

The fishing village on the Adda, in Lecco, that Manzoni names in The Betrothed, with its coloured houses and the church of Fra Cristoforo's convent.

Today
Visit duration: 30 min – 1 h
Booking: Not required
Area: Lecco Branch

Maurizio Moro5153 · CC BY-SA 4.0

ildirettore · CC BY 3.0
Baldo Simone · CC BY-SA 4.0

Why go

Pescarenico is Lecco's old fishing village on the left bank of the Adda, where the Lecco branch of Lake Como meets Lake Garlate.

Its coloured houses and lanes form nine historic quarters; lucie, the lake's rowing boats, are moored along the shore. Manzoni names it in The Betrothed as the setting of Fra Cristoforo's convent and Lucia's escape by boat. The Capuchin convent was built in 1576 and its church consecrated in 1600. Both buildings became a barracks in 1798; the convent was suppressed and sold in 1810. The church of Santi Materno e Lucia preserves nine glass cases with late seventeenth-century Neapolitan scenes in coloured wax and papier-mâché, and the Trinity of 1600 by Giovan Battista Crespi, known as Cerano.

Of the nine glass cases on the altar, seven show scenes from the lives of Christ and the Virgin and two from those of Saints Francis and Clare.
In the Trinity altarpiece, Giovan Battista Crespi, known as Cerano, painted Saints Francis and Gregory the Great in adoration.
Opposite the church, behind the grille of the 1699 ossuary, are the skulls of friars who died of plague.

Highlights

The church of Santi Materno e Lucia and the convent cloister
The lucia boats on the shore and the view of the Resegone from the Azzone Visconti bridge

Getting there

The church is on Piazza Padre Cristoforo, in the Pescarenico district, on the left bank of the Adda just downstream of the Azzone Visconti bridge, from which you see the village with the Resegone behind.