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To all of us it happens, in the course of life, to pass several times a short distance from wonderful places, often completely unknown. It is the case of those who cross the Statale 36 between Verceia and Novate Mezzola and ignore to be a few hundred meters away from an authentic jewel of the Romanesque Lombard.

A church dedicated to San Fedele, called “tempietto” due to its small size, set inside a verdant clearing, enclosed between the soft flow of the Mera towards the lake of Como and the rugged rocky spurs of the Larian Mountains. A mystical and fascinating place, incredibly quiet, where nature seems finally in perfect harmony with man: the church, tacit watchman of the river, observes for more than a thousand years the slow flow of water and the succession of seasons on long trees on the opposite bank. A curtain of vegetation that today does its best to block the noises coming from the nearby state road and obstruct the view of the sheds.

The small temple of San Fedelino, in the small surface, offers many of the fundamental elements of the Romanesque period. Built by skilled comacine workers, it is a real miniature jewel, one of the oldest testimonies in Lombardy. The church has remained basically unchanged in its architectural bodies thanks to the isolation of the clearing in which it is inserted.

The structure is almost square in plan, with a semicircular apse oriented towards the east, in the direction of the rising sun as the medieval symbolism wanted; the façade therefore remains leaning against the mountain.

San Fedelino, in its long history, has had its moments of decadence, during which it was used for the most varied uses: from a Spanish blockhouse, to a stable, or even to the deposit of tools for the workers who here extracted a granite that still today it is known as Sanfedelino.