Of this little mountain church only the front is plastered: the other three sides are bare stone. It is not carelessness, it is economy. Plaster costs money, and you put it where people look; the rest stays as the masons left it. It is a rule you find across half of rural Italy, and here you read it at a glance.
What to see
The main front is gabled, with two slopes, a lintelled doorway and two small barred windows at the sides. High up, in the middle, an oculus. From the front rises a bell-gable: the simplest and cheapest way to hold a bell, a pierced wall instead of a tower.
The dedication says something too. Saint John Bosco is a Piedmontese saint of the nineteenth century, proclaimed such only in the nineteen-thirties: a church named after him cannot be older than that date, at least under this name. In the Aosta Valley and in Piedmont such dedications multiplied immediately afterwards.
Visiting
The church is at Pracharbon, a hamlet of Ayas, in the val d'Ayas; it is a hamlet church, so it opens for services and in the tourist season. Ten minutes.
Our editors' tip
Walk right round the building, which takes thirty seconds. You will see the clean plastered front and then, turning the corner, the naked stone. That boundary between the two treatments tells you exactly which way people came from and which wall counted. In vernacular architecture, spending follows the gaze.