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Meda (Monza e Brianza, Italy, Italy): Sanctuary of the Holy Crucifix
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Show an other place around Milan worth a visit: |
 The Sanctuary of the Holy Crucifix in Meda, originally the Church of Santa Maria Nascente, is a very old church (the first written record dates from 1036). Until the late eighteenth century it was dependent on the adjacent Monastery of San Vittore.
Later It became parish church and remained so until the mid-twentieth century. The name Sanctuary of the Holy Crucifix was given to it as a result of a miracle that took place in 1813, when a lightning during a summer storm passed through the old church, leaving unharmed the participants to the mass, who trusted to the protection of the crucifix.
The church was rebuilt in the seventeenth century and later between 1881 and 1893. Of the original church nothing is recognizable any more.
The current facade is very simple, adorned with a simple prothyrum and four statues housed in niches depicting Saint Anthony, the Saints and Aimo Vermondo and Saint Giovanni Oldrati, saints all linked in various ways to the town of Meda.
More interesting is the interior, which is divided into three extensively decorated naves; the most relevant element is the eclectic fresco cycle realized in 1924 by Luigi Morgari, Turin painter repeatedly present in Brianza who painted also most of the frescoes in the Church of Santa Francesca Romana in Milan, in collaboration with Primo Busnelli from Meda. The church still retains in a bottom of the altar niche of the right aisle the old crucifix to which the tradition attributes the miracle of 1813.
The interior of the church reflects a style typical for the period between the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, regarding both the structure and pictorial decorations. The interior is theredore colorful but at the same time a little dull, because the colors used are all similar in brightness and hue. The interior therefore hardly manages to be admired as it would deserve, because the windows, for arrangement and size, do not guarantee adequate lighting in the absence of additional artificial illumination.
Typically the churches of this kind reveal their beauty more easily in photos that live!
This is the case, to mention just two other examples, of the aforementioned Church of Santa Francesca Romana in Milan and of the Church of San Columbano in Biandrate, this second very similar to the one described on this page also in the size and in the type of urban center in which it is located.
Categories: Places of historical value of artistic value
Piazza Vittorio Veneto, 20821 Meda MB |
Further pictures of Sanctuary of the Holy Crucifix in the section Photography |