Church of SS. Ambrogio and Theodulo
This is the parish church of Stresa.
Here, in August 1912 the funeral service for Elizabeth of Saxony, duchess of Genoa, who had lived in the town she loved by the lake for fifty-five years, took place.
Among thousands of grieving people who had came to mourn her, was also her daughter Marguerite, who had married Humbert I and had become queen of Italy.
The building was designed by the abbot Giuseppe Zanoia from Omegna and erected in 1790. It has a Greek-cross plan and its neoclassic front is embellished by two sculptures of angels playing musical instruments.
Inside are three altars: the one on the left is decorated with a valuable painting by Morazzone, portraying the Crucifix and the Saints Charles, Francis and Anthony, while the main altar in the middle is surrounded by beautiful Lombard seventeenth-century paintings dedicated to St Ambrose.
The altar on the right preserves the mortal remains of St Vitaliano, a child martyr who in the year 260, when he was only ten months and twenty-eight days old, was snatched from his family by the Romans' anti-Christian ferocity.
In 1833, when the little corpse was extracted from the catacombs, Pope Gregory XVI agreed to Anna Maria Bolongaro's desire to move it from Rome to the parish church of Stresa where, ever since 1835, it has been venerated as that of the patron saint of children.
