The church of Saints Andrew and Pontius is the parish church of Dronero and belongs to the diocese of Saluzzo. The double dedication is not a whim: it recalls the titles of the two ancient pievi of the district. The first church of Dronero had gone up in the twelfth century; the one you see today was begun in 1455, finished in 1461 and consecrated on 13 October of that same year.
What to see
The front faces west and is crowned with small spires. Four pilaster strips divide it into three parts: rose windows and two-light windows open in the side ones, while the central one carries the portal, surmounted by a gable with a multifoil rose window. An inscription runs across the portal dating the consecration to the twelfth day of the month of October and entrusting the building to the two patron saints. Inside, three naves lead to a presbytery raised by a single step and to the apse with its ambulatory, an unusual solution in a valley parish church. The dome is of 1722, to a design by Francesco Gallo, and was decorated by Carlo Innocenzo Pozzo.
Visiting
Among the things to look for are the organ, built in 1854 with 1602 pipes, and a holy water stoup carrying the same date as the church, 1461. Then there are a wooden crucifix carved in the fifteenth century and the funeral monument of Giovanni Battista Caroli, made around 1584. The church went on changing for centuries: the new sacristy was built between 1782 and 1784, the chapel of the Sacred Heart added in 1876, the front remade in 1882, the bell tower overhauled in 1959 and the roof redone between 2015 and 2017.
Our editors' tip
The most eloquent document about this church is not a work of art but a set of minutes. In 1643 bishop Francesco Agostino Della Chiesa made his pastoral visit and recorded that the parish church held some fifteen altars and twenty-eight tombs, that the floor was broken in several places and that the sacristy would not do: he ordered the lot to be redone. Twelve years earlier the plague had passed through, and the church had been cleaned, plastered and repainted to disinfect it. As you go in, try to picture it that way: full of private altars, with gravestones underfoot and the walls freshly whitened against contagion.