Eremo di San Donato

Eremo di San Donato stands on a rocky spur in Garzola, above Como and its lake. The former Franciscan convent sits beside an old route between Brunate and Como. It began as a place of penance, where hermits used a natural cave now called Grotta del Beato Geremia. Two saint statues remain inside the natural cave. In the early Middle Ages, a fortified signal tower connected with Castello Baradello occupied this same site. That tower later became the church bell tower. The fifteenth-century monastery belonged first to Benedictine foundations, then passed to Franciscans of the Third Order. Franciscans served nearby communities from this hermitage. The church retains its original religious use, while the former convent serves as private housing. Its single nave, side chapel, and apse display a clear architectural arrangement. Don Giuseppe Bernasconi, a priest and Garibaldi volunteer, later lived here in voluntary exile. He died at the hermitage in 1923, aged ninety-eight. The cave, tower, church, and residence record changing layers of Como’s religious and civic history.