The station is built on the site of San Giovanni Pedemonte established in the 13th century, deconsecrated in and then destroyed in It was the Como home of the Dominican Order who were entrusted with administering the Inquisition. In this early painting, San Giovanni Pedemonte is in the foreground. The Diocese of Como shares the gruesome record with Venice for the prosecution and execution of the highest number of those accused of Satan worship and witchcraft.
At the height of this vindictive fervour in the late s and early s, around 1, cases were being tried a year. The church of Saint Euphemia in Musso is just one of many religious buildings located on previously pagan sites. The Inquisition had started in the 12th century but became a more formalised method of discouraging heresy under Pope Innocent IV in He entrusted the Dominican order with the task of conducting these tribunals which initially focussed on discouraging the Catharism and Waldensian heresies prevalent at the time in Southern France and Northern Italy.
It was only later in the 15th century when the Inquisition turned its attention to the suppression of rustic rites with links to paganism. Plans of the site of San Giovanni Pedemonte with its three cloisters, church and library. It would become a major religious complex for the city consisting of a church, three separate cloisters and a library.
The very final remains of the religious complex were cleared to make way for the railway station in In those early days, the Inquisition had not acquired the reputation for the torture, cruelty and intollerance it was to display in later years.
San Pietro was a firm but fair judge much respected by the citizens of Como but hated by some of the aristocracy. He was to die in assassinated on the orders of two local aristocratic families near to Meda as he was walking from Como to Milan. He was later sanctified and became more commonly known as San Pietro Martire. A tract by Bernardo Rategno on how to interrogate heretics. The Inquisitors who followed San Pietro Martire in the 15th and 16th centuries developed a very different reputation.
