Church Saint Lorenzo

The oldest church in Desenzano is located in the hinterland of Rivoltella towards Centenaro.

The church Saint Lorenzo, as we see now, with a single hall and semicircular apse, can be attributed to the Romanesque period, but the excavations, carried out in 2009 in the external area, have brought to light a larger building, probably dating from the 5th to the 6th century with a adjoining cemetery from the early Middle Ages. The original church Saint Lorenzo has a single hall of 16 x 9.60 m, with a large semicircular apse (with a rope of about 7 m), two annexes to the north and south of the church and an atrium or vestibule. Subsequently, a quadrangular building was built in front of the church, within which three other walls delimit a smaller room. It could be a baptistery, although no trace of a basement baptismal font has been found. In the external area, to the east, north and west, 24 east-west oriented tombs have been excavated, with the faces of the buried east facing, typical of Christian tradition cemeteries. The tombs are distributed in rows fairly uniformly and the absence of overlaps, even in the north-east area where the number is higher, indicates that the burials had to be indicated on the surface by mounds and / or signs of which however, trace has been preserved through modern plowing. The most attested tomb types are those in large rmingular blocks covered with cocciopesto (24%) and in earthen pits covered with mixed media materials (24%). There are also tombs in bare earth, in masonry, in moraine pebbles, those covered by large boulders; unique are a “half-Capuchin” tomb and a pit lined with vertically-fixed bricks. The hypothesis that San Lorenzo corresponds to the ancient baptismal church is reflected in the high number of churches, presumably early medieval, that are found in its vicinity, all in relation to agrarian landscapes of Roman times.

Historical sources G.P. Brogiolo: “The medieval churches of Garda Brescia”