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Oggiono
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Show an other place around Milan worth a visit: |
 Oggiono is another Italian municipality that despite its small size contains numerous treasures of art and history, as well as offering beautiful landscapes. Certainly it is hard to see everything in a single day, and this is why, at the moment, only a part of the things mentioned on this page can be shown in photos.
Oggiono is located about 50 km northeast of Milan, on the southern shore of Lake Annone, one of the Brianza lakes, although the town is separated from the lake by a hilly area, with the town rising to the highest part of this hills on their southern side. Because of this, a staircase leads from the square of the parish church of Sant'Eufemia to a viewpoint overlooking the lake (Fig. 3).
The hills (to be precise, glacial moraines) line the town also on the eastern side.
The area has proved to be inhabited since the Neolithic period and it is probable that it already housed a settlement in Roman times.
The parish of Oggiono probably dates back to the Longobard Age (584-774 AD). What is certain is that in the 6th century a baptistery was built in Oggiono, on the ruins of which the current Baptistery of San Giovanni Battista was later built in the eleventh century.
Since the Middle Ages Oggiono has been part of the sphere of influence of Milan.
In 1614 King Philip III of Spain granted Oggiono the market. It still takes place today under the name of fair of Saint Andrea.
After being for centuries an eminently agricultural municipality, with the addition of numerous shops and of the silk industry, in the first half of the twentieth century Oggiono saw the flourishing of numerous mechanical and textile companies. In recent years the importance of the tertiary sector has increased.
Oggiorno hosts many cultural heritage sites:
- Baptistery of San Giovanni: It represents the most valuable historic-artistic asset of Oggiono and is a significant example of Lombard Romanesque. It was built in the eleventh century, in place of a previous one dating back to the eighth or ninth century.
In the Baroque period it was transformed into a sacristy and heavily modified. Restoration work in the twentieth century restored its original appearance and brought to light what was left of the internal frescoes.
The building is octagonal, although inside it appears circular. The radial symmetry is broken by a large apse originally probably completely frescoed. At the center of the main space is what remains of the baptismal font.
On the walls there are various votive frescoes from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries (in particular San Sebastian three times and San Rocco two times).
The Baptistery of San Giovanni communicates through a door with the adjacent Church of Sant'Eufemia.
Baptistery of San Giovanni in greater detail
- Church of Sant'Eufemia (Large picture): The church has very ancient origins, with a first version dating back to the early Middle Ages. However, the present church was built at the beginning of the seventeenth century.
The façade with two orders is sober and marked horizontally and vertically by pilasters and stone cornices.
The interior has a Latin cross plan, with a single nave. The ceiling is made up by barrel vaults.
The decorations of the structures are mostly neoclassical, if not of even later periods.
Particularly noteworthy are the third chapel on the right, which houses a Renaissance fresco by Marco di Oggiono depicting an Enthroned Madonna with Child between Saint Euphemia (left) and Saint Catherine of Alexandria (right), and the Polyptych of Mark Oggiono, composed of ten tables painted in oil and placed at the bottom of the left wall.
The bell tower is characterized by a showy upper part, with rather contorted and heavy lines and built at the end of the eighteenth century, after the previous version had fallen on the church ceiling due to lightning.
Church of Sant'Eufemia in greater detail
- Column of Sant'Eufemia: (Large picture) According to some documents it was built in 1748, according to others on the wish of St. Charles Borromeo to push people to prayer during the plague of 1576. Initially placed in the center of the church square, it was later moved to its current position.
The patron saint is depicted with two lions crouching at her feet and an iron cross with the symbols of passion in her right hand. Originally she also carried the aureole of martyrdom, but it was removed in 1798, when the wave of the French revolution arrived in Oggiono.
Under the statue, on the entablature, a crumpled shield in sandstone with a towered castle.
- Church of San Lorenzo: It is a baroque style church at the edge of the village, at the cemetery..
It is a church of ancient origins, with the first version built in the thirteenth century. The current version was instead made between 1745 and 1751 in late Baroque style.
Externally it is characterized by the large portico which occupies the entire width of the building and which on the front side creates a sort of large serizzo stone serliana (apart from the central arch).
The luminous interior appears almost ellipsoidal, due to the rounded corners of the central body and the presence of two side chapels, also with rounded corners and furnishings and decorations entirely trompe l'oeil. The deep apse is dominated by the high altar and the large altarpiece above it, both made of wood. The second acts as a frame for a large mannerist painting of 1609 by Paolo Camillo Landriani, called Duchino, depicting a Virgin with the Dead Christ between San Rocco and San Sebastiano.
Church of San Lorenzo in greater detail
- Church of Sant'Agata: (Fig. 1) The oldest evidence of the small church, located in the historic center not far from the Church of Sant'Eufemia, dates back to the thirteenth century.
The current version reflects a modernization made in the Baroque period, to be precise in the first quarter of the eighteenth century.
The interior has the peculiarity of being divided on two levels, with the lower being the main level and the low upper one with the function of a choral hall. The two floors are connected by a narrow staircase with stone steps.Church of Sant'Agata in detail
- Church of the Lazzaretto: It is another small baroque church, built in 1715 in correspondence with the lazaretto (hospital for infectious diseases) of the town (the house where the guardian lives today). It is therefore found outside the town, near a source of water that was considered therapeutic. Under its floor there is an ossuary in which the bones of the lazaretto cemetery were collected, after strong rains once uncovered the pits.
The exterior is characterized by a large pronaos having a structure similar to that of the Church of San Lorenzo, ie that of a large Serliana that occupies the entire width of the façade. In this case, however, above it there are no structures in addition to the roof. The upper edge has fanciful baroque lines on all three sides.
Also the two windows on the sides of the door of the church are located behind openings of a typically baroque mixtilinear shape.
The trompe l'oeil retable above the altar is the frame for an important altarpiece depicting Saint Sebastian, the Virgin with Child and Saint Francis, dated 1670 and restored in 1970.
Above there is a tablet depicting Saint Giobbe naked, in oil on canvas, attributed to Marco d'Oggiono and cutout of an originally larger canvas.
In the south-east corner of the small square in front of the church, today dedicated to the fallen of the First World War, there is an ancient water source of always fresh water.
- The small Church of Santa Marzia in the fraction Molinatto, inaugurated on September 14, 1659, was built by Duke Giovanni Maria Cella as an ex voto because his family had been spared from the Manzonian plague. With a rectangular plan, externally it is barely recognizable as a church, the only decorations being the stone portal with a broken tympanum and the frame, also in stone, of the facade window.
The interior is richer, with a single nave and a barrel vault with lunettes.
Each span has a fresco in the center of the ceiling inside a stucco frame. In one the Glory of Saint Marzia, in the other the Exaltation of the Cross.
The spans are marked by pilasters decorated with fake marble. Moreover on each of the two walls there are two niches closed by glass windows, inside which there are interesting polychrome wooden statues.
The rectangular presbytery is covered by a cross vault painted with ornamental decorations; on the back wall we find trompe l'oeil neo-baroque architectural and floral elements made at the end of the nineteenth century or at the beginning of the following century; on the walls there are fake frames and inside the one of the back wall there is a painting on canvas depicting the Holy Family.
In a niche above the altar there is a precious urn containing the remains of Santa Marzia, flanked by two reliquaries.
- Church of San Giorgio: The church of San Giorgio in the fraction Imberido, built probably at the end of the 13th century, is mentioned for the first time by the sources in reference to the pastoral visit of Archbishop Sforza in 1455.
The salient facade is very simple and devoid of decorations. The door is framed by a stone portal. Above, in the center, an oculus.
The interior has a single nave with six side chapels.
The main altar is in polychrome marble, in Baroque style. On the walls of the apsidal basin, two paintings of 1710 by Sante Prinate depicting Jesus ascending to Calvary and the Immaculate Conception. Above on the back wall there is a 17th century Alibani canvas depicting the Annunciation.
The ellipsoidal dome above the altar houses frescoes from the late nineteenth century by Pasquale Agudio depicting the Triumph of the Eucharist and the four evangelists.
- Darsena: Elegant neo-classical building by the lake. It owes its name to the presence, in fact, of comprehending a boathouse. It can be attributed to the Riva-Finolos, nobles of Oggiono, coowners of part of the lake. Towards the lake, facing west, there is a loggia with three arches supported by slender columns in Moltrasio granite. Below it a wide arched opening protected by a railing leads to the inside of the boathouse
Categories: Places of historical value of artistic value of landscape value
Oggiono |
Further pictures of Oggiono in the section Photography |