Chiesa di Santa Caterina

The round-bodied church of Santa Caterina tells two stories at once. Built in the early eighteenth century as the church of a cloistered Dominican convent, it now serves Alba's Romanian Orthodox community. Its icons and liturgy share space with a baroque altarpiece of 1705 and a fifteenth-century carved crucifix.

Why it matters

Santa Caterina combines a Piedmontese Baroque interior with the continuing religious life of Alba's Romanian Orthodox community. The central circular hall is ringed by stucco statues and framed by a two-storey facade with Doric and Ionic orders. Its altarpiece, the Martyrdom of Saint Catherine of Alexandria, is signed by Sebastiano Taricco and dated 1705.

What to notice

The facade's lower Doric and upper Ionic orders are associated with Count Carlo Giacinto Roero di Guarene. Four stucco statues in the circular hall represent San Domenico Guzman, Santa Caterina da Siena, Sant'Innocenzo I and Santa Rosalia. The main altar painting is Taricco's 1705 Martyrdom of Saint Catherine of Alexandria. A painted and gilded wooden crucifix in the presbytery is attributed to a Ligurian-Piedmontese sculptor and dated to the first half of the fifteenth century. Orthodox furnishings coexist with elements of the former convent church.

Context and history

A church stood here by the fourteenth century; when that building had become so dilapidated that nothing of it could be kept, the Dominican nuns of the adjacent cloistered monastery obtained permission to rebuild; the new church, ordered by Monsignor Giuseppe Roero, was formally consecrated in 1711. Its presbytery vault was painted around 1711 with architectural quadrature, later hidden under early twentieth-century repainting. When the convent closed, the church passed to diocesan administration and, in recent decades, was entrusted on loan for use to the Romanian Orthodox parish of San Lorenzo, which serves the local Romanian community. The result is a small building that summarises Alba's religious history — medieval, counter-reformation, monastic, and now Orthodox.