Santa Marta, Carate Urio

It was first dedicated to Saints Nazarius and Celsus and had only the central nave and part of the bell tower; tradition holds it was founded around the year 1000 and consecrated in 1095 by Pope Urban II. Over the centuries it was reworked several times into today's form, with a nave and two aisles; of the Romanesque building only the bell tower remains, rising above the stone-slab roof. Inside are mostly frescoes from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century, and on the high altar an altarpiece of the Virgin and Child among saints. You climb to it by a stairway lined with the fourteen chapels of the Way of the Cross, made in 1752 and restored around the 2000s. From the churchyard you see the lake's first basin and the mountains. The mule track to the Monti di Carate also starts here.