Collegiata di San Secondo

Asti's patron-saint church stands on the square bearing his name in the heart of the medieval city. Built across the 13th to 15th centuries around far older remains, it holds Gandolfino's Polittico dei Magi, the saint's relics in its crypt, and the Carroccio and banners of the Palio di Asti, the civic race held in his honour.

Why it matters

The church combines Asti's patronal devotion with its civic identity. A first place of worship rose just outside the early city walls on the spot where, according to tradition, San Secondo was martyred in 119 AD; the site then served as a cemetery church before growing into the city's second ecclesiastical centre after the Cathedral. From the 10th century onward the church bound itself to the merchant class and the institutions of the free commune, earning the nickname "de Mercato" — the church of the market. That fusion of civic pride and religion still defines the building: the Palio di Asti is held in San Secondo’s honour, and its winning banners have a place in the church’s civic tradition.

What to notice

The present church took shape between the 13th and 15th centuries on a Latin cross plan, with three naves separated by arches and covered in cross vaults. Two elements survive from before that campaign: a 10th-century bell tower and the crypt, both fragments of the paleo-Christian and Romanesque phases that preceded the Gothic rebuilding.

Above the facade’s central rose window, a niche reopened in 1988 holds a copy of the medieval statue of San Secondo, returning a figure to a spot that had stood empty for centuries.

The art inside spans five centuries. The masterpiece is the Polittico dei Magi, painted around 1518 by Gandolfino da Roreto, Asti's leading Renaissance painter, whose work absorbed influences travelling down from Lombardy and across from Liguria. Nearby hangs a Pala della Natività by an anonymous painter of the later 16th century. A carved wooden statue of Santa Lucia (1648), a sculpted and painted Crucifix of 1658 by Michele Enatem, and the wooden choir designed by Paolo Pusterla in 1702 fill out the interior, which was completed by a Baroque high altar renewed around 1700.

Two chapels carry the civic memory. Restorations between 1968 and 1974 recovered fresco fragments of the 14th to 17th centuries in the chapels of the right nave. The first chapel on the right holds objects connected with Asti’s civic identity: the Carroccio, the great ceremonial cart of the city, and the Palio banners won over the decades, associated with the tradition of the Offerta del Palio in Piazza San Secondo.

Context and history

The church's layered history mirrors Asti's own. The martyrium tradition fixed the site's sanctity; the communal era made it wealthy; the 13th-to-15th-century rebuilding gave it the Gothic form visible today, its naves rising as the commune's merchant families competed to endow the city with towers and churches. Below the high altar, the crypt still preserves the relics of San Secondo, keeping the martyr physically present beneath the civic church dedicated to him.

The 20th century added a scholarly layer: the 1968–1974 restorations stripped later additions from the right-nave chapels and recovered their fresco fragments, revealing a sequence of medieval and Renaissance painting in the chapels.