Basilica of San Fedele, Como

Basilica of San Fedele, Como tickets: which one to buy

San Fedele hides in the lanes a couple of minutes east of the cathedral of Como, on a small square that was the medieval corn market, and plenty of visitors walk past without noticing it. Entry is free. Guided walking tours of the old town usually include it precisely because it is the counterweight to the cathedral, since one building shows the late Gothic and Renaissance wealth of the silk city and the other shows what stood there four centuries earlier.

If you are coming to Como for the lake, a two-hour town walk that links the cathedral, this church, the Roman street grid and the rationalist buildings of the 1930s is the best use of a morning before a boat. Combined tickets are not a factor here, since nothing is charged, but a guide is genuinely useful: the most interesting things about San Fedele are structural and easy to miss, and the labelling inside is minimal. Groups tend to be small because the church is small.

Visiting Basilica of San Fedele, Como: what to see

The present building dates from about 1120 and replaced an earlier church dedicated to Saint Euphemia. When the relics of Fidelis of Como were moved here in the tenth century, the dedication changed with them, and the church served as the cathedral of the city before that title passed to the building on the main square. The plan is the reason to come. Instead of a single apse, the east end opens into a trefoil of three, wrapped by a narrow ambulatory with galleries above, an arrangement borrowed from the Rhineland and rare in Lombardy.

The effect from inside is of a rounded, layered space quite unlike a standard basilica. The north doorway carries carved uprights with beasts and a griffin-like creature seizing its prey, probably reused from the older church. Faded frescoes survive on the piers and in the apse. The front facing the square is a neo-Romanesque reconstruction of 1914, with a Renaissance rose window reset into it, and the leaning medieval house to its left holds the composition together in photographs.

Basilica of San Fedele, Como opening hours and the best time to go

The church keeps parish hours with a midday break, and late afternoon is the pleasant time, when the sun reaches the square and the cafes put out tables. Como fills with day visitors from Milan between eleven and four, though almost all of them stay on the lakefront and around the funicular station, so this corner stays calm even in August. Sunday morning mass is well attended by residents.

The square is one of the best-preserved medieval spaces in the city, with timbered upper storeys overhanging the street, and it is used for a small antiques market on set weekends. From here it is five minutes to the cathedral, ten to the lake promenade and the funicular up to Brunate, and a similar walk to the silk museum on the southern edge of town. In winter the interior is cold and dim, which suits the architecture, so bring a coat and do not expect much artificial lighting.