Santa Caterina del Sasso - Lake Maggiore & Lake Orta Travel Guide

Near Leggiuno stands a monastery complex built into the sheer rock face, a unique monument of art history whose aesthetic singularity has made it a symbol of the beauty of Lake Maggiore as a whole in countless publications. You can reach the monastery either by boat from Stresa or from a large car park at Reno, close to the lakeside road.

According to the founding legend, the wealthy cloth merchant Alberto Besozzi (later beatified) was shipwrecked in the 12th century and vowed, if he were saved, to give away his fortune to St Nicholas of Bari, patron saint of all those in peril at sea, and to live out his life as a hermit. After his death, a small Dominican monastery grew up on the site of his hermitage.

The oldest traces of the monastery date from the early 14th century. During lengthy restoration work (1978-1992), frescoes of great art-historical significance from the early 14th century (1307-1320) were uncovered in the eastern part of the Church of St Nicholas (San Nicolà). Over the following years the complex expanded and three further churches were added, partly interlocking, though the individual building phases remain clearly recognisable.

Coming from the car park, you see parts of the monastery garden, which is closed to the public, and arrive at the entrance building and chapter house of the so-called South Monastery. The originally Gothic building gained an extra storey in the 17th century, which largely destroyed the medieval frescoes. Two larger fragments have been uncovered again, the Deposition from the Cross being particularly notable for its realistic depictions of contemporary knights' armour. Through a courtyard which, like all the open and enclosed spaces of the monastery, looks out over the lake, you pass a wine press and reach the "Conventino" (little convent). Its portico (1508) once contained a 17th-century Dance of Death, which is now in the municipal museum in Varese. Now the much-photographed view opens up towards the church monastery, whose bell tower rises above the precipice falling away to the lake. The church, above whose front section lie the monks' cells of the oldest part of the monastery, has a Renaissance portico (1508) added in front.

Inside, extensive frescoes of male and female saints have been uncovered, attributed to Aurelio Luini, son of Bernardino Luini (early 16th century). You first enter a corridor; to the right, separated by a wall of pillars, lies the Church of Santa Caterina, dedicated to St Catherine of Alexandria. On the high altar of this main church of the monastery, dating from the early 17th century, is an altarpiece bringing together all the key figures: St Nicholas of Bari in bishop's vestments, the Virgin and Child, St Catherine and the Blessed Alberto Besozzi.

To the right is the Church of San Nicolà (1307-1310), in whose rib vault the frescoes from the time of its construction were found: Christ is surrounded by the symbols of the four Evangelists, alongside Pope St Gregory the Great and St Ambrose, all dressed in sumptuous robes. These late Romanesque frescoes, schooled in classical Byzantine models, show the very highest artistic mastery.

To the left of the Church of St Nicholas is the Chapel of Santa Maria Nova, with a painted wooden statue of the Madonna del Carmine from the 17th century. Up a step lies the oldest part: to the right the Capella dei Sassi, the Chapel of the Boulders, containing the urn of the Blessed Alberto, and straight ahead the Sacello, the hermit's cell hewn out of the rock and topped by a domed structure on columns, dating from 1195(?). The founder's bones were found in the Chapel of the Boulders in 1535. The chapel takes its name from rockfalls which, in 1640 or 1660, smashed its roof but miraculously spared the hermit's cell. In 1910 another rockfall destroyed the vaulting, and during the restoration work of the 1980s the crumbling rock above the monastery was also stabilised with a steel corset. On the east wall of the Chapel of the Boulders is a triptych from the first half of the 16th century, attributed to Giovanni Pietro Crespi.


After this sight of such art-historical and cultural importance, a swimming stop in neighbouring Reno on the flat lakeshore is a good idea, as the road further south generally stays quite far from the water.

A little inland lies Leggiuno. The small church of SS. Primo e Feliciano, with its 11th-century campanile, has a portal made up of Roman columns and somewhat clumsy 9th-century capitals. There are also several Roman funerary monuments nearby.

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