The church of Santa Croce, which Vinovo calls dij Batù, was raised in the second half of the fifteenth century as the place of worship of the Company of Flagellants. Batù, in Piedmontese, means the beaten: it is the name people used for the brothers.
What to see
The building changed many times over the centuries, and the decisive step came in 1577, when Bartolomeo Feccia founded the Confraternity of Santa Croce here. From then on it was the brothers who kept it up, with offerings and with the dues paid for every burial.
Visiting
It stands in the centre of Vinovo and is seen together with the parish church of San Bartolomeo and the Della Rovere castle, which are a few steps away: the tour of the old centre takes half an hour.
Our editors' tip
In processions the brothers of Santa Croce wore a white alb with their heads covered by a hood of the same colour, and that is where the nickname comes from. The same name turns up at Pianezza, where another confraternity of flagellants built itself a church in 1680: it is a piece of religious history that repeats from one Piedmontese town to the next.