The church of San Gaudenzio is dedicated to a martyr who, according to legend, introduced Christianity to Bregaglia at the beginning of the 4th century and met his death by the sword. The pilgrimage church with its relics was built in close proximity to where the beheaded man laid his head.
On Ascension Day in 1551, as the valley was transitioning during the Reformation, a sermon by the well-known reformer Pier Paolo Vergerio sparked an iconoclastic movement that began the decline of the church, built only three decades earlier.
