Church of Santa Caterina

Holy Mass Summer Schedule

From 2ⁿᵈ June 2025: 6:00 pm each Tuesday

Visiting Hours

The church is open to the public for celebrations. To visit outside these hours, please contact the Parish of Manerba.

The Church of Santa Caterina is located on Via XXV Aprile, in the centre of the hamlet of Gardoncino in Manerba del Garda. It is easily reachable by car or bicycle following the road that crosses the town. A small piazza marks the access to the church, immersed in a context of tranquillity and history.

Dedicated to Saint Catherine of Alexandria, a saint who greatly affected the popular imagination as a martyr who lived between the 3ʳᵈ and 4ᵗʰ centuries in Egypt when the persecution of Christians reached a brutal cruelty.

Catherine was a beautiful noble girl who refused to marry Maximinus Gaia, nephew of Galerius, governor of Egypt, due to her being a Christian.

To prove that Christ cannot be God, she was forced to debate fifty philosophers, but Catherine – relying on her good philosophical training – managed to convert them. As a consequence, she was tortured with wheels with rims studded with iron studs that bent like wicker in contact with the girl’s skin. Next came decapitation but even here, something miraculous happened. From her severed neck, like the stem of certain herbs, instead of blood gushing out came milk. The cult of Saint Catherine spread throughout the Italian territory in the 14ᵗʰ century and she is today invoked as a protector of lactating women, castaways and millers (in recent times, also of motorists).

Built in the late medieval period, the church has a single room with longitudinal plan, a gabled front and a double-pitched roof supported by exposed wooden beams. The simple but harmonious façade is embellished by an elegant central rose window, known as the “Wheel of Saint Catherine”, made of terracotta and decorated with circular motifs.

On the sides of the façade are two arched windows, fitted in later eras, whilst on the south side there is a secondary entrance and an evocative trifora. The bell tower, restored in the 18ᵗʰ century, has four large monoforas and a conical concrete roof.

The interior houses valuable elements, including a rare 15ᵗʰ-century votive fresco depicting the Crucifixion with the Madonna and Saints, and a 16ᵗʰ-century altarpiece dedicated to Saint Catherine, placed atop a stucco altar that imitates marble. Of particular curiosity is the rustic holy water font with a carved head that welcomes visitors at the entrance.