Skip to content

Nesso

Santa Maria di Vico, Nesso

The Romanesque church of the Vico hamlet, above Nesso, already named in 1184: inside, saints painted around 1300 and Bartolomeo de Benzi's polyptych of the Assumption, from 1500.

Visit duration
15–30 min
Booking
Not required
Area
The Triangle
The church's stone side and the bell tower with its clock, on the hamlet's paved square, under a blue sky.Ysogo · CC BY-SA 4.0
  • Fausto Zambra · CC BY-SA 4.0
  • Tremej · CC BY-SA 4.0

1 / 3

The church's stone side and the bell tower with its clock, on the hamlet's paved square, under a blue sky.

Ysogo · CC BY-SA 4.0

Why go

Santa Maria di Vico, in the upper part of Nesso, was the church of a Humiliati hospice and is documented in 1184.

The former hospice, converted into a private home, encloses the building, leaving its eastern side and Romanesque bell tower exposed. Inside are late Romanesque paintings, dated between 1287 and 1312, of saints and the Virgin enthroned. Bartolomeo de Benzi painted the polyptych of the Assumption commissioned in 1500 by the rector Galeazzo Lavizzari and the Virgin of 1505 above the walled-up door. Other frescoes by him on the south wall show Saints Abbondio, Ambrose and Nicholas. Linked to Como's Sant'Anna Hospital in the sixteenth century, the church served as a pest house during epidemics.

  • Paintings of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries in a Romanesque church enclosed by a hamlet's houses.
  • Bartolomeo de Benzi's gilded polyptych, by the same painter as the Passion in Santa Tecla at Torno.

Highlights

  • The polyptych of the Assumption of 1500
  • The saints and the Virgin painted between 1287 and 1312
  • The Virgin of 1505 above the walled-up door
  • The twelfth-century bell tower

Getting there

  • It stands on Via Santa Maria, in the Vico hamlet, in the upper part of Nesso along the road to Zelbio; the C130 Como–Bellagio bus stops at Nesso.
The nave with its pews, the red trussed roof and the polyptych at the end, on the altar.Ysogo · CC BY-SA 4.0

On the map

Explore the lake
NessoBriennoSanta Maria di Vico, Nesso

© OpenStreetMap contributors · ODbL

What's on nearby

Events within a few kilometres, on now or coming up.

See all

Nearby: places, experiences, services

Distances as the crow flies.

Sources and credits

Sources and credits