Riva San Vitale Baptistery

Ferdinando Reggiori, c. 1400, restored 1953 - 1955

At the foot of Monte San Giorgio, on Lake Ceresio, stands the Baptistery of Riva San Vitale, the oldest Christian monument preserved in Switzerland, which bears witness to the distant origins of the village, certainly dating back to a Roman "vicus".

Probably built in the 5th century, the building has an octagonal plan inscribed in a square. It was originally perhaps surrounded by an ambulatory, of which some traces remain on the ground.

The interior has deep semicircular niches and a small apse added at a later date. At the centre is the baptismal font (the ancient octagonal pool where baptism by immersion was performed, a practice abolished in the 9th-10th centuries). A second, monolithic circular font was placed on top of it, probably in that period. In the niches are very precious Romanesque frescoes of the 12th century, depicting the Nativity of Christ, the Assumption, the Last Judgement, Christ the Judge and the symbols of the Evangelists.

In the apse are traces of an earlier Crucifixion. The floor is partly the original one, with white and black marble tesserae.