Oratory of San Carlo Borromeo
The church, which overlooks today’s Via San Carlo, was commissioned by the Boniotti family, originally from Palàveno, in Val Trompia, and later emigrated to Verona, where they made a fortune in the manufacturing and tanning sectors. At the end of the 1500s it invested its capital in Monteforte and San Bonifacio. In Borgolecco, today’s Viale Europa di Monteforte, the Boniotti family built a villa which one of the members of the family, Benedetto Boniotti, had the oratory dedicated to San Carlo Borromeo (1538-1584) added in the early 1600s. .
The building has a small door with an upper shelf supported by modillions. The facade, entirely smooth and higher than the building, ends with the tympanum, surmounted by three stone pinnacles equipped with spires, which support many globes decorated with a cross. On the roof stands the bell tower, without the bell.
Inside, the small room is illuminated by two windows. The apse, one step higher than the hall, has a barrel vault. On the left side of the building is the small sacristy, equipped with a door that once connected it to the villa’s garden.
A decorative band with triglyphs runs high on the walls of the hall and you can see the remains of the original stucco decoration, with elegant figurations and ornamental motifs; on the fluted pilasters, inside cartouches supported by angels,which once had the initials M – M – G – M – M. The author of the stuccos, according to Luciano Rognini, could possibly be David Reti, very active in the Veronese and neighboring provinces at the beginning of the seventeenth century.
The marble altar with classical lines has columns with Ionic capitals and pulvins, which support the tympanum. According to Rognini himself, the altar is attributable to Domenico Curtoni, sculptor and architect from Verona, and should be compared with the altar of the church of Sant’Elena, located near the cathedral of Verona. Once the altar of the oratory had an altarpiece, painted by the famous Veronese painter Claudio Ridolfi (1570–1644), depicting the Virgin Mary with Child and Saints Charles Borromeo, Francis of Assisi and John the Baptist. The work, cited by Carlo Ridolfi, Bartolomeo Dal Pozzo and Giambattista Lanceni, disappeared under unclear circumstances, during or immediately after World War II.
In 1836 the doctor Pietro Trezzolani, a native of Monteforte but a long-time resident of Verona, bought the chapel with the related charges from Luigi Boniotti, together with the villa, the cottages and the orchard.
The oratory, which had already fallen into disrepair in the early 1900s, was reduced to precarious conditions at the end of World War II, especially due to the collapse of part of the roof, with consequent infiltration of water inside. The state of the building is still somewhat problematic today.
