A church already stood at Barge around the year one thousand, Romanesque, and the bell tower was probably raised between the eleventh and twelfth centuries by Piedmontese workmen. In the fifteenth century the tower was heightened and given new bells and a clock that had previously belonged to the church of San Maurizio in Pinerolo.
What to see
The facade is of exposed brick, divided into two registers marked by pilasters; above the doorway a niche holds the statue of Saint John the Baptist, made at the beginning of the twentieth century. Inside there is a single nave onto which six side chapels open, and the hall closes with the presbytery raised two steps and the semicircular apse.
Visiting
Two works are worth the look. The altarpiece of the Baptism of Christ is by an unknown eighteenth-century painter; the organ was built between 1740 and 1744 and restored by the royal organ builder Giovanni Battista Concone between 1778 and 1779. Of the medieval church what mainly survives is the bell tower, which is also the reason Barge was already a place of weight in the eleventh century.
Our editors' tip
This parish church exists because the previous one fell down. On 16 May 1728 part of the church collapsed, and the survey established that the columns were not fit to carry such a weight; it was decided to rebuild from scratch and the design was entrusted to the Mondovì architect Francesco Gallo. The first stone is of 9 July 1730, the church opened for worship in 1740 but was truly finished only in 1760, and the consecration came on 4 October 1772.