Chiesa di San Cristoforo sul Naviglio

Along the Naviglio Grande in Milan, Chiesa di San Cristoforo sul Naviglio brings two churches together. Their façades combine Romanesque strength, Gothic details, the Visconti serpent, and Milan’s red cross.

The older church has Romanesque origins and was rebuilt during the excavation of the Naviglio Grande. A Gothic portal and a fourteenth-century rose window mark its later changes. The Ducal Chapel followed in the fifteenth century under Gian Galeazzo Visconti’s patronage. Its construction answered a vow made during Milan’s plague of 1399, and its dedication includes four saints linked to the Visconti family.

Inside, a seventeenth-century alteration removed the dividing wall and created a double-nave church. The left nave has a wooden ceiling and fresco fragments from the Bergognone school. The right nave preserves Gothic frescoes and a fourteenth-century wooden Saint Christopher carrying the Christ Child. In the apse, frescoes associated with Bernardino Luini’s school show divine and saintly figures in vivid colours. A fifteenth-century bell tower now holds four bells, including one added in 1987.