The church of Santa Maria del Rosario stands in corso Garibaldi, where the oratory of Santa Maria della Cella once was, already cited in the episcopal assessments of 1440. In the second half of the sixteenth century the Confraternity of the Rosary was founded, and from the first decade of the seventeenth the church was practically rebuilt.
What to see
The late seventeenth-century baroque facade is the work of master masons from the Biella area and echoes the models of the Valsessera and the Valsesia: the surface divided by pilasters and cornices, and two notable stucco statues of the Virgin and the archangel Gabriel. The sober panelled wooden door belongs to the same moment. Inside, the baroque decoration is extremely rich, and at the centre stands the altar machine enclosing the statue of the Virgin of 1620, surrounded by roundels with the mysteries of the Rosary.
Visiting
Above the niche is the most precious piece: the triptych by Gerolamo Giovenone, painted in the early 1530s, with the Virgin and Child, the Magdalen and Saint John inside a carved and gilded wooden frame. The high altar is of polychrome marble, with an ancona of stucco and masonry on twisted columns; the statues of Saint Catherine, Saint Dominic and the Virgin of the Rosary are by Lombard stucco workers. On the right wall the lunettes with scenes from the life of Christ: the Circumcision and the Presentation at the Temple are of 1745, by the Valsesia painter Lorenzo Peracino.
Our editors' tip
The chapel of Sant'Anna, in the side aisle, carries a date that explains a story: it was begun in 1678, the year the male Confraternity of the Rosary was joined by the Company of the Hundred Sisters. It was built by the carpenter Carlo Comola and the master masons Martino Martinetto and Giovanni Boffa. The exuberant decoration of the central nave, by contrast, is much later, of 1877, by the Mazzetti brothers of Ailoche.