Promoted by a community of tertiary Franciscan, Santa Maria in Strada was built between 1348 and 1368 on the project of Ambrogio from Milan along the road (strada) that connected Monza with the Lombard capital, where its name.
Passed in 1393 to the Augustinians of the Milan convent of San Marco, it was internally transformed in 1756 and restored as a facade in 1870.
Despite the restorations, the front, with false loggia and decorated in terracotta, remains one of the most beautiful of the Lombard Gothic, inspired both by the examples of the Pisan Giovanni di Balduccio, active in Milan from 1335 to 1349, and the nearby facade of Matteo da Campione for the Cathedral of Monza.
In the Museum and Treasure of the Cathedral of Monza are kept two frescoes of the church of Santa Maria in Strada, part of a scene of Annunciation originally housed on the sides of the portal.
Dating from the second half of the fourteenth century, they reflect the style of Giusto de’ Menabuoi and are notable for the delicate rendering of the figures, projected on a background in golden pastille conceived as a damask that is already prelude to the splendor of international Gothic painting.
From the facade was removed in 1995, to preserve it in the Museum, an elegant stone statue of the Madonna with Child, corresponding to the type of the Madonna Regina, replaced on site by a copy.
Dating back to the first half of the fifteenth century, it is the work of an anonymous Lombard master who also created some sculptures for the capitals of the Milan Cathedral, inspired by transalpine examples.
The evidence given to the belt that tightens the life of the woman refers with all probability to the devotion of the Augustinians to the Madonna della Cintola, whose cult was approved in 1439.
