The collegiate church of Sant'Agata is the parish church of Santhià and rises on the central piazza Roma, a short way from the town hall. It stands where a pieve dedicated to the same saint already existed in the tenth century, and that is where the town's name comes from: Santhià is a contraction of Sancta Agatha. In 990 archbishop Sigeric of Canterbury, returning from Rome along the road that bears his name, chose this place as a stage and noted it in his diary as Sca Agath.
What to see
Of the twelfth-century Romanesque building only two pieces survive, and they are the finest. The brick bell tower rises massively on the right side, with the barest of decorative concessions: slender pilaster strips and string courses of hanging arches. Beneath the presbytery opens the crypt dedicated to Saint Stephen, datable to the second quarter of the twelfth century: a bare, severe space with small columns lacking carved capitals and cross vaults marked by heavy ribs, which served the offices of the college of canons.
Visiting
The rest is neoclassical. The present appearance is due to the rebuilding of 1836 signed by the architect Giuseppe Talucchi, who chose basilican forms and a three-nave plan divided by two rows of great columns. Outside is a large porch frescoed with religious scenes by Luigi Hartmann; inside, on the central vault, the Glory of Saint Agatha painted by Paolo Emilio Morgari in 1862.
Our editors' tip
The piece not to miss is in the third chapel of the left nave: the polyptych by Gerolamo Giovenone of 1531, in ten panels, one of which is missing because it was stolen. At the centre are the Madonna and Child and Saint Agatha; around them, the saints dear to local devotion. It was in all likelihood the altarpiece of the sixteenth-century church's high altar, and it is first-hand evidence of the painted Renaissance in the Vercelli area. The organ by the Serassi of Bergamo, of 1861, is also remarkable.