Church of Santa Croce

Address and contacts

Via Fratelli Cervi - 42022 Boretto
Phones
0039 0522 964105 - Parish church of Boretto
0039 0522 687463 - Guardian

Opening times

The church is visitable upon previous arrangement with the guardian

How to get there

See the indication to reach Boretto

Historical notes

Today’s church of Santa Croce is built on the spot where, around the year 1700, there used to be a Franciscan cloister with annexed cemetery. In 1716, after many previous unsuccessful applications, the community of Villa Arzenago (as the village then used to be called) finally managed to obtain permission from the then ruling lord Rinaldo III of Modena to build a church dedicated to Santa Croce. The church contains relics from the holy cross which are still worshipped today and is a fine example of 18th-century style Baroque architecture, simple and without excesses of stuccos and ornaments. The magnificent slender façade surmounted by an imposing cross seems to reach up to the sky.
The church was completed in 1726, and the village eventually came to be called Santa Croce instead of Villa Arzenago. The villagers of Santa Croce were so enamoured with the special quality of their “little motherland”, that they took care of it with the utmost devotion, making it into a little jewel of the low-lying plain. This constant search for nobility and forms has led the villagers of Santa Croce to define themselves as the “Parisians”.