The clean-cut profile of the Cathedral dominates Como is historic centre and cannot but catch the eye of the traveller reaching the town from the mountain-passes, the plain or the lake. Built not far from the lake, dose to the old bishop’s palace which overlooked a wet basin, it stands as a marked emblem of the period in which Como and its lake were at the heart of the network of lines of communication of the day, connecting Italy to both northem and centraI Europe, since its architecture, sculptures and paintings testify to the convergence between transalpine and Italian figurative arts.
The Cathedral, work upon which was started in 1396, was built in different stages over three centuries and a half; the cupola was completed in 1744. The architectural design characterising it is an articulated and complex one, thanks to which totally unlike interpretations of space and very different styles merge into a single building. Although built over a long period of time (the façade and the Gothic naves date back to the 15th century, the presbytery and side apses to the 16th and the cupola to the 17th), it has preserved a harmony which, from age to age, has been reiterated by connecting the new parts to the proportions defined in the previous age.