Of the church of the Confraternity of San Giuseppe only the bell tower is original, probably of the early sixteenth century. Everything else is later: the enlargement began in 1693 thanks to a donation by Angelica Margherita Sala and was completed in 1708.
What to see
The layout looks to the late baroque, and the interior has a peculiarity: two side corridors that resemble matronei. Behind the altar hang the most valuable paintings, among them a Nativity by Moncalvo, that is by Guglielmo Caccia; frescoes of the early seventeenth century are also attributed to him, while others are by Carlo Martini, who worked here in 1938. The high altar is of 1770, and together with it the wooden choir with its stalls is worth a look.
Visiting
The doorway is eighteenth-century and was restored at the end of the nineteenth: it is the first piece you meet and already tells the layering of the building, where the sixteenth century of the bell tower, the seventeenth of the paintings and the eighteenth of the altar stand side by side.
Our editors' tip
The least visible history is that of the companies. Only in 1607, after several pastoral visits by the bishop of Vercelli, was the company of the Santissima Trinità set up here, and then that of the Misericordia, which had a precise task: to attend those condemned to death. It is the kind of detail that explains what a confraternity was actually for, beyond the altars.