Basilica di San Fedele

This guide to the Basilica di San Fedele in Lake Como starts with two carved dragons locked over a shared kill on the main doorway, a panel salvaged from an even older church on the same site. It follows the Comacine masons who raised the basilica around 1120 in Lombard Romanesque style, the paleochristian church buried beneath it, and the year 964 when the relics of the martyred soldier Fedele were carried in and sealed beneath the altar. Step inside and look up at the octagonal lantern ringed with three cloverleaf apses, unusual for this part of the region.