The church of San Giuseppe dates from 1204 and was originally dedicated to Saint Eusebius. Its present name arrived in 1582, when Carlo Borromeo installed here the confraternity of the Body of the Lord and of Saint Joseph, formed by merging two earlier ones; the first description of the building is from 1602, on the occasion of a pastoral visit by Federico Borromeo.
What to see
From a single nave the church moved to a cruciform plan between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and since then the bell tower has stood between the sacristy and the apse. The altarpiece and the tabernacle come from an eighteenth-century arrangement: statuettes of Saints Peter and Paul, Andrew and Philip, and at the top the group of Saint Joseph with the Child, all polychrome, gilded and incised in a manner that recalls Spanish taste. The canvas on the altar is attributed to the school of Carlo Francesco Nuvolone.
Visiting
The most surprising part is under the floor. During work in 1975 an eighteenth-century tomb came to light, that of the Spanish captain Miguel Aguado who died at Arona, and then pottery from a Gaulish burial area: a bowl protected by stones set upright in the ground and the remains of a spinning-top vase datable to the first century BC.
Our editors' tip
Under the central part a small brick furnace for smelting metals was also found, of late imperial date, built over the necropolis: in the surrounding ground lay three kilos of bronze fragments waiting to be melted down again. It is the only such installation in Piedmont preserved whole.
