The church of San Michele Arcangelo is held to be one of the masterpieces of Bernardo Antonio Vittone, the Turin architect, and its plan alone explains why: it is octagonal, and it was built in 1759.
What to see
Over the octagon runs a dome divided into eight segments, decorated in stucco, from which a lantern rises. It is the kind of solution with which Vittone worked on light: the space cannot be read all at once, the covering opens upwards and the visitor lifts their gaze to work out where the church ends. On the left side altar there is a late Gothic wooden statue, far older than the building that houses it.
Visiting
That statue has a story worth the trip: it was gathered out of the river Orco during one of its floods. It is the kind of object that in a town of the river plain explains more than a guidebook — the floods of the Orco were for centuries the fact people had to live with, and what the water carried off from one village could surface again in another.
Our editors' tip
Go knowing that this is one of Rivarolo's three parishes, along with San Giacomo and Santi Angeli Custodi, and that it is not the patron's church: the great feast, on 25 July, is celebrated in San Giacomo. Here you come for the architecture, and it is worth entering when the light is high, because the lantern only works then.