Santa Maria Assunta, also known as Santa Maria Assunta e San Vitale, is the parish church of Busca. The original church was Gothic and had gone up in the fourteenth century together with the bell tower. At the start of the eighteenth century the idea of rebuilding it took shape, but the first attempt stalled; interest revived in 1717, when the town council resolved that a larger building was needed and entrusted the design to the architect Francesco Gallo, from Mondovì.
What to see
Work began in July, the official laying of the first stone came in October, and the church was completed in 1728; on 4 June 1729 it was blessed and opened for worship by the parish priest don Giuseppe Francesco Celebrino, and a few days later consecrated by bishop Cristoforo Barattà. The front is of exposed brick, divided into two orders marked by pilasters and half-columns; above the doorway, which was left unfinished, opens a window with a curved tympanum.
Visiting
The plan is a Greek cross. The hall has barrel vaults and, where nave and transept meet, a lowered circular vault; at the end is the presbytery, raised three steps, with its dome and the semicircular apse covered by a semi-dome and decorated with frescoes. Gallo is the same architect as the dome of the sanctuary of Vicoforte, and at Busca he also left the church of the Santissima Annunziata, the one locals call La Bianca.
Our editors' tip
One detail shows how building worked back then: in 1731 it was noticed that snow, falling from the nave roof onto those of the side chapels, was ruining them, and there was a plan to redo them. Francesco Gallo himself stopped the initiative, and the matter was settled by reducing the pitch of the nave roof. The earthquake of 1808, on the other hand, damaged the apse, which had to be propped up in a hurry.