Chiesa di San Dalmazzo

Chiesa di San Dalmazzo stands in Italy beside the former Barnabite convent, with a basilica plan and three naves. A long barrel vault draws your gaze through the central space. The Renaissance façade belongs to a sixteenth-century phase, while the interior combines later interventions with Gothic details. An ancient baptismal font and several pillars preserve traces of a church standing here around the year one thousand.

Enrico Reffo and his school created the richest decoration across the nave and transept. Hot-applied wax colours shine against gold backgrounds. Long processions show penitents, widows, virgins, children, Church doctors, prophets and monks moving through the painted panels. Carrara marble shapes the pulpit, while a ciborium rises above the main altar. Polygonal pillars with naturalistic capitals and small Gothic shrines bring different periods into the same interior.

The side aisles contain eight chapel niches with works from several stages of the building’s history. Francesco Gonin painted Saint John baptising Christ in the ancient baptistery. At the far end, Giovanni Antonio Molineri’s canvas depicts the Deposition. Air raids damaged the building in 1942 and 1943, and a plaque records restoration completed in 1959. Look between the old font and the gold-ground figures to see two eras sharing one space.