The only Romanesque-Gothic testimony of Este, at least for the apse and the bell tower. An original "Lombard" church mentioned as early as the 9th century. In ancient times, the church, built on a level at least one meter lower than the current road level, was connected to a women's convent.
The bell tower has characterized the church for centuries due to its tilt, which may have already been accentuated around 1300.
The church faces the apse and the bell tower towards the busy Via Principe Umberto, so much so that vintage postcards depict that side rather than the façade, which is little known because it is very simple and further away from the passage.
The naves were probably rebuilt in the centuries following 1300, while the bell tower and the apse are older. The bell tower is nearly 24 meters high and has had a pronounced lean for at least seven centuries, reinforced by numerous restorations. A lightning strike in 1619, in addition to damaging the bell chamber, "caused the church wall known as the bell tower to spread for three beams," writes Agostino da Vò in his Chronicle.
The layout is of extreme simplicity. The apse presbytery and the bell tower have walls of adequate thickness, while the walls of the nave and the façade are thinner and less certain, indicating a different skill level among the workers and the investment capacity during the second phase of construction (or reconstruction).
The façade is probably later than the apse. The more modest masonry and the lack of decorations indicate a later phase, probably of greater poverty or urgency compared to the original intervention.
The apse presbytery is a cube topped by a cylinder that contains the hemispherical vault. Both the type and the materials and decorations place the construction of this part (and the bell tower) at the end of the 1200s (a plaque embedded in the north wall dates to 1293).
The church has three naves, separated by masonry pillars, with very minimal decorations. The apse is made up of a cube topped by a hemispherical dome, partly decorated with stars and a sky. In ancient times, the apse was frescoed, while a 14th-century fresco of Christ on the cross remains visible in the side chapel of St. Lawrence.
To the left of the altar, a fragment of a 14th-century fresco depicting a bleeding and crucified female figure: St. Margaret of Antioch (4th-century martyr), highly venerated in the Middle Ages.
