Before the church you see today, Gassino was the seat of a pieve dedicated to Saint Peter, and on that pieve depended several churches on the right bank of the Po. The parish church of Saints Peter and Paul was rebuilt from its foundations at the start of the seventeenth century, then reworked in 1724 and 1761.
What to see
The facade is of brick, gabled and convex, facing west; a string course divides it into two registers marked by pilasters. The lower and wider one has the doorway at its centre; the upper carries a painted image of the two patrons and is crowned by a curved tympanum. On the southern side rises the slender square bell tower, with a round-arched single window on each face of the belfry and a four-pitched roof.
Visiting
Inside, three naves are separated by pillars with pilasters carrying round arches; above them runs a moulded projecting cornice on which the sail vaults rest. The presbytery is raised by a few steps, bounded by balustrades and closed by a wide quadrangular apse. In the nineteen-eighties the ambo and the altar facing the congregation arrived, for the liturgical adaptation.
Our editors' tip
The two things to look at are in the presbytery: the eighteenth-century altarpiece with the Madonna and Child between Saints Peter and Paul, painted by Claudio Francesco Beaumont, and the canvas of the Visitation attributed to Guglielmo Caccia. Two signatures you would not expect in a village parish church.