Church of Santa Maria Maddalena in Zambla Bassa

A church dedicated to the Magdalene already existed in Zambla in the sixteenth century. On 17 November 1587 the bishop of Bergamo, Gerolamo Ragazzoni, made it independent of its mother church of San Bartolomeo in Oltre il Colle. In the mid-seventeenth century, at the visit of bishop Gregorio Barbarigo, the parish had one priest, an income of 397 lire, the confraternities of the Blessed Sacrament and of the Rosary and the Misericordia.

The summary of churches compiled in 1666 by the curia's chancellor Giovanni Giacomo Marenzi gives it four altars and 352 parishioners, more than the 196 of San Bartolomeo and the 173 of Zorzone in the same document. The rebuilt church was consecrated on 18 July 1737 by bishop Antonio Redetti, who added the title of the Blessed Virgin Mary to the ancient dedication to the Magdalene.

At the visit of bishop Giovanni Paolo Dolfin, between 1778 and 1781, there were four altars: the school of the Blessed Sacrament at the high altar, the confraternity of the Rosary at the second. The curate was elected by the villagers, who held the patronage, and was assisted by two chaplains; within the parish there was already the oratory of the Immaculate Conception in Zambla Alta. In 1861 the parish counted 403 parishioners and two dependent oratories, the Immacolata and the Addolorata.

Between 1921 and 1924 the church changed its look. In 1921 the bishop of Mangalore, Paolo Carlo Perini, consecrated the altars of St Anthony of Padua and St Anthony Abbot; in 1922 Giovanni Menicatti, vicar apostolic of northern Henan in China, those of St Barbara and St Mary Magdalene. In 1924 the church was lengthened by one bay and the vault was decorated with medallions of the Magdalene, St Joan of Arc and the theological virtues; on 26 May of the same year bishop Luigi Maria Marelli consecrated the high altar, placing in it relics of Saints Alexander and Pius.

In the second half of the century there was further work, with frescoes by Agostino Manini recorded by Wikipedia. Meanwhile the parish map changed: in 1960 Zambla Alta became an independent parish, but on 20 November 1986 the parish of the Magdalene was succeeded by that of Santa Maria Maddalena e Santa Maria Immacolata, which also took back the benefice of Zambla Alta. Finally, between 1990 and 2000, an altar in wood and stone facing the congregation was placed in the middle of the presbytery.

The plastered façade has two registers: below, four pilasters divide it into three sections; above, the side sections are narrower and have no outer pilasters. In the centre are the arched stone doorway and an arched window, also framed in stone; the upper register has a gable roof, the lower one two lower pitches.

The ambulatory portico is the church's most recognisable feature: it runs along one side and wraps round almost the whole apse. Behind the apse rises the bell tower of squared stone, with a gently sloping four-pitched roof: the diocesan survey dates its completion to 1835, the year carved on the underside of an arch of the bell chamber.

The interior has a single nave covered by a depressed barrel vault and divided into seven bays by stuccoed pilasters. The even-numbered bays hold the six side altars, set in deep chapels; the first and last bays are trapezoidal in plan.

The presbytery is narrower than the nave and rises six steps of Zandobbio marble. The high altar has a green marble top with onyx panels and steps and tabernacle stand in green and white marble; the dome over the presbytery rests on pendentives painted with the four evangelists, and the apse ends in a half-dome, with wooden choir stalls. From the entrance towards the altar you find:

The most important work is on the high altar: St Mary Magdalene in Glory by Gian Paolo Cavagna (1550-1627), a Bergamo painter active in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The Centro Storico Culturale Valle Brembana describes it like this: a flight of angels lifts the saint in a strong contrast of light and shadow, with an upward movement that carries gestures and drapery, and in the lower part opens a mountain landscape.

On one of the first side altars an eighteenth-century wooden frame encloses a polyptych with the Madonna and Saints Charles and Francis in the upper register; the lower panels are modern. Here the sources differ: Wikipedia attributes the panels to Cavagna himself, the Centro Storico Culturale to a workshop (“del Lavagna”, as its text has it). On the altar opposite, a nineteenth-century Rosary altarpiece sits in a rich seventeenth-century frame.

The furnishings are completed by a processional cross and a chalice of the seventeenth century worked by chasing and embossing, and by eighteenth-century crosses, candlesticks, altar cards and lamps in silver-plated copper.

The organ was built in 1799 by Giuseppe Serassi, of the family of organ builders active for six generations between 1720 and 1895: the list of Serassi works published by Wikipedia records it precisely in the Magdalene church at Zambla in Oltre il Colle.

The bells, too, tell of the war. The five bells consecrated by bishop Pier Luigi Speranza on 11 June 1861 were requisitioned during the conflict and replaced by the present peal of five bells in B flat, cast by the Capanni foundry and consecrated by bishop Adriano Bernareggi on 22 August 1951.

The church of the Immacolata in Zambla Alta was built at the wish of a few inhabitants: by a decree of 28 July 1712 the Senate of the Republic of Venice allowed them to build a chapel of ease of the parish church, blessed in 1718 by the archpriest of Dossena. It has a Greek-cross plan, a porch at the entrance and its bell tower to the left of the presbytery; in 1940 a marble baptistery and the niche of the Sacred Heart were added and in 1951 Giorgio Pruneri of Grosio cast its five bells. The Centro Storico Culturale notes the baroque marble high altar, with the Virgin carved on the frontal, and a seventeenth-century crucifix recently restored to its original colours. Between 1960 and 1986 it was an independent parish.

At the place called Colle di Zambla Alta, on the road to the Arera, the small church of the Madonna di Caravaggio is an eighteenth-century chapel lengthened by one bay in the nineteenth century: on the altar, in a frescoed frame, is the canvas of the apparition of the Madonna of Caravaggio commissioned in 1937 by the Benvenuti family, who had a holiday home in Zambla Alta. Finally, a short distance from the parish church stands the small church of Santa Lucia, which in 1861 was listed as the oratory of Our Lady of Sorrows.