The patron saint of Pinerolo is Saint Donatus, celebrated on the Monday after the last Sunday of August in the duomo dedicated to him, already recorded in a document from 1044 and rebuilt several times between the 15th and 18th centuries: it now stands in Gothic form, with three rose windows and three portals on the facade, and holds inside Gothic holy-water fonts, the choir and a wooden pulpit carved in the 17th century. The bell tower, from 1425, was a civic tower in the Middle Ages. The church's name also recalls one of the medieval town's original districts, the lower district of San Donato, alongside those of San Verano, San Pietro Val Lemina and San Maurizio.
Pinerolo was long home to the Italian cavalry: in 1849 the Cavalry Application School moved there from Venaria Reale, suppressed in 1945, now home to the National Museum of the Cavalry Corps; the town was also home to the Nizza Cavalleria, founded in 1690 and the oldest regiment of the Italian cavalry. Every other year, in October, the town re-enacts the legend of the Man in the Iron Mask, the mysterious prisoner who, according to local tradition, was held in Pinerolo's citadel, in one of the town's most important historical events.
