S. VITTORE SQUARE

S. Vittore square

It houses the Basilica of San Vittore, from which it takes its name.

It is located in the center of the ancient medieval village, it is enclosed between eighteenth-, nineteenth- and twentieth-century buildings. In place of the current headquarters of a branch of the Intesa San Paolo bank erected in 1939, there was until 1935 a nineteenth-century building which was connected by a covered passage with the buildings at the end of the Corso. During the works for its demolition, a Roman altar was found, now conserved in the city's Archaeological Museum, bearing the inscription "Diis et Deabus" ("to the gods and goddesses"). The opposite side of the square was also modified: in 1784 the oratory of San Domenico, one of the many churches in Varese that had disappeared, was sold to private individuals. The oratory was frescoed inside with works by Magatti and in a photo from the early twentieth century you can still recognize its bell tower towering above the roofs of the adjacent houses.