Largo Stella Fermo, 3, 23100 Sondrio SO
The church of the Blessed Virgin of the Rosary was built between 1954 and 1960 to serve a new city neighborhood that originally took form as post-WWII public housing developments along Viale Milano and the Mallero River.
The church was designed by engineer Enrico Tirinzoni of Sondrio and expresses a new vision of a place of worship, now interpreted as a parish center offering various services. When the cornerstone was laid in 1954, the local community saw it as an homage to Monsignor Giovanni Tirinzoni (Enrico’s uncle) on the 25th anniversary of his arrival in Sondrio as archpriest.
The project immediately welcomed the contributions of artists from Valtellina or further afield, offering them the opportunity to venture into sacred themes. The building is thus a small treasure chest of contemporary art.
You get a first taste immediately upon crossing the threshold: five bronze bas reliefs by the sculptor G. Abram of Delebio are aligned above the entrance. Abram also created the four busts of Prophets located on the first columns of the nave. The main doors are finished in engraved and embossed metal laminae by Leone Betti of Tresivio in 2010.
The interior features works by Renzo Sala: the canvas with Saint John the Baptist in the baptismal chapel, and a refined Via Crucis composed of simple numbered panels, with a wooden Via Crucis added later, carved by Giorgio Squarcia based on drawings by Floriana Palmieri Frizziero and Guido Bellini Bressi.
In the apse, the renowned sculptor Lydia Silvestri, native of Chiuro, created an entire ensemble in bronze consisting of the altar, the candlesticks, the tabernacle, the lamp holder, the steps, and the statue of the Madonna del Rosario (1963) on the back wall. She also crafted the polychrome marble floor mosaic with orderly arranged crosses of identical dimensions but different geometrical and abstract decorations, making no figurative concessions except perhaps some stylized hint of a Eucharistic chalice.
Surrounded by these many expressions of contemporary art hangs a large and noteworthy 17th-century baroque painting near the organ: the Madonna del Rosario among Saints (1637-38) is the work of the brothers Giovan Battista and Giovan Paolo Recchi of Como, representing their family bottega, which was very active in Piedmont, Canton Ticino, and Lombardy.
