The town hall of Alba is a fourteenth-century building that today does not look medieval, and that is no accident: in the nineteenth century the architect Giorgio Busca worked on it and deliberately softened its medieval features. It was the taste of the time, which held the middle ages to be a coarse age in need of correction; a century later the exact opposite would be done.
What to see
The palace stands in piazza Risorgimento, the cathedral square, in the heart of the old town. Inside, in the council chamber, important paintings are kept, among them a panel with the Virgin and Child by Macrino d'Alba, dated 1501: the painter who bears the city's name and who here, instead of hanging in a museum, hangs in the room where the town council meets.
It is an Italian custom little talked about: many municipalities keep first-rate works in their ceremonial rooms, where they end up being seen mostly by the people who work there. They are better looked at when the room opens for a visit or a ceremony.
Visiting
The building is the seat of the municipality, so you go in during office hours; access to the council chamber depends on openings and events, and it is better to ask beforehand. Half an hour.
Our editors' tip
Step out into the square and raise your eyes to the roofs around: among the houses rise the brick towers of the medieval families, the ones that had Alba called the city of a hundred towers. The town hall had its old face taken away by restoration, the towers did not: in the same square you have the before and the after.