In 1595 the archbishop of Turin, Carlo Broglia, on his pastoral visit, found that the old parish church of San Giovanni beside the graveyard was no longer enough for the faithful, and ordered a new one to be built inside the village. The church of the Assumption went up quickly, between 1617 and 1618, and was inspected in October of that same 1618.
What to see
The facade is of brick, gabled, facing east, and a string course divides it into two registers marked by pilaster strips. Below there are three doorways, two rectangular windows and two niches with statues of Saints Peter and Paul; above, crowned by a small central pediment, three more niches hold the Virgin of the Assumption, Saint John the Baptist and the Magdalen. The bell tower, on a square base, is divided into several orders by cornices and ends in a pyramidal spire.
Visiting
Inside, three naves are separated by pillars with pilasters carrying round arches; above runs a moulded projecting cornice on which the lunetted barrel vaults rest. The presbytery is raised by several steps, closed by balustrades and by a rectangular apse. The choir, the sacristy and the rectory came between the end of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth; then followed the consolidation of the structure in 1768 and the renewal of the ceiling in 1776.
Our editors' tip
This church has never stopped being a building site, and it shows. In 1840 it was lengthened by one bay and given its new front; between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the nave floor was lowered by about a metre; the bell tower dates from 1919; the latest work, on the left side nave, is from 2017. Look at it knowing that every part carries a different date.