San Pietro is the parish church of Cherasco, and its dedication has a story of relocation. The first mention of a church with an attached priory dedicated to Saint Peter, at Manzano, dates from 1192; in 1243, the year Cherasco was founded, the title was transferred to the new town's main church. That church is explicitly mentioned for the first time in 1259 and held provostal rank.
What to see
For centuries the cure of souls belonged to the Lateran Canons, then passed to the secular clergy in the second half of the sixteenth century. Between the end of the seventeenth century and the early eighteenth the church was restored from top to bottom and the presbytery partly rebuilt, at the wish of the parish priest Lelio Luigi Trotti Sandri. In 1767 Francesco Maria and Giovanni Battista Concone, both from Asti, built the new organ, replacing the sixteenth-century one.
Visiting
The decoration of the naves is nineteenth and twentieth century: the central nave was embellished in 1883 by the painter Rodolfo Morgari, while the side ones were decorated later by Fedele Finati of Alba. Among the works is a canvas of Heraclius returning the Cross to Jerusalem, by Martino Bonfini from the Marches, which came from the church of San Gregorio.
Our editors' tip
The administrative history is worth a thought: with the suppression of the diocese of Alba the church came under Asti, and it returned only when the diocese was restored. These shifts look bureaucratic and instead explain why in certain periods nothing was built here: when the bishop changes, priorities and money change with him.