Chiesa di San Lorenzo Martire

When the ecclesiastical community of Torrebelvicino was established is unknown, also because the ancient inhabitants of Torrebelvicino were part of the Pieve of Belvicino, the mother church of all the churches in the Val Leogra.
Within the Pieve, at an unspecified time, chapels were built with a priest who performed some religious functions but lived in the rectory of Pieve, in community with other presbyters or clerics, and under the leadership of the archpriest. It was necessary to wait until the end of the 15th century and the beginning of the 16th to have a larger and more suitable sacred building for a population that had increased in number and had more economic resources. What this church was like cannot be known since no documentation remains to adequately illustrate it. However, an image may have reached us from a canvas that historian Maccà refers to having seen at the altar of St. Anthony the Abbot, a work by Alessandro Maganza. In this painting, in the background, the municipality of Torrebelvicino was depicted with the church at its center, but this painting has been removed, and there is no information about its current location. In 1532, the parish was enriched with a precious canvas depicting the martyrdom of St. Lawrence, a work by the artist Giovanni De Mio from Schio, one of the most representative painters of the 16th century in Vicenza.
In 1557, Francesco Gualteri, De Mio's brother, painted the picture "Madonna among Saints Bartholomew and Anthony the Abbot." Both works, commissioned and paid for by the municipality of Torrebelvicino, can still be admired in this church today. Subsequently, during the 19th century, the parish church was rebuilt in neoclassical style. Towards the end of the century, there was a need to construct a new bell tower to replace the belfry from the 15th century. It was designed by engineer Gio Battista Saccardo and inaugurated in 1896.
However, in the reconstruction of the church in the 19th century, the choir had not been rebuilt. Don Giuseppe Peruzzi, who had been appointed parish priest in 1897, decided in 1903 to demolish the old choir and build a new one, in accordance with the design of the church.