The church of the Natività di Maria Vergine is the parish church of Venaria Reale, in the archdiocese of Turin. The first mention of an «ecclesia Sanctae Mariae» at Altessano Superiore, the old name of Venaria, dates from 1386: it then depended on the parish church of San Pietro di Pianezza. In 1577 Archbishop Girolamo della Rovere definitively separated the two parishes of Altessano Superiore and Inferiore. The church was destroyed by a fire in 1639; the new one, designed by Amedeo di Castellamonte, was completed in 1652, although the façade was finished only in 1669. But water seeped through the roofs, and the structure weakened until it collapsed, in 1753.
What to see
Today's church is the one rebuilt to a design by Benedetto Alfieri: the works began in the very year of the collapse and ended in 1755. The façade, facing south-west, is divided by a cornice into two registers. In the lower one, marked by half-columns, the portal is surmounted by a large shell-shaped decoration, and at the sides are two niches with statues; the upper one has a taller central part, crowned by the tympanum and flanked by linking arches. The bell tower, on a square base, ends in a spire.
The interior is a Latin cross, with a single nave, onto which the side chapels open through round arches. The walls are marked by pilasters with composite capitals, which carry a projecting entablature; above it springs the barrel vault. The decorative schemes were carried out in the two years just before the First World War, when the bell tower too was remodelled.
Visiting
Opening and Mass times should be checked with the parish.
Our editors' tip
The high altar has an illustrious donor: it was given to the parish church, in 1756, by King Carlo Emanuele III. In the seventies of the same century the building was then enlarged.
