San Bartolomeo is the parish church of Boves. The first mention of a chapel here, dependent on the pieve of Cuneo, dates from 1375 and appears in the Registrum ecclesiarum diocesis Astensis. In the second half of the seventeenth century that building was no longer enough: in 1669 the town council resolved to build a larger one, and on 19 February of the same year the priest Luigi Gaffodio laid the first stone on behalf of Domenico Truchi, bishop of Mondovì. The finished church was consecrated by the same bishop on 15 March 1675.
What to see
The front faces north-west, rises in steps and is divided into two registers by a moulded string course, both marked out by half-columns. Below are the three lintelled doorways and two windows; above, between volutes bearing statues of Saint Anthony of Padua and Saint Justa, a fresco by Andrea Vinaj showing Saint Bartholomew baptising the king of Armenia. A dentilled triangular tympanum with the eye of God crowns the whole. The side doors of the facade were opened in 1819 and the entire front was decorated in 1875.
Visiting
Inside, the hall has three naves divided by pilasters carrying round arches; above the entablature springs the cross vault. The liturgical adjustment brought a walnut table facing the people to the centre of the presbytery, and the ambo has the shape of a lectern, like an open book, with the words I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.
Our editors' tip
The part that tells you most is the bell tower. It is square in plan, with a single-light window on each side of the belfry and a dome on a circular base, but what counts is its base: it was rebuilt in 1870 on top of the old tower of the ricetto, the fortified point around which the village once huddled. The new church leaned on the old defence.