Museo e Cripta di Sant'Anastasio

Beside Asti's cathedral, the Museo e Cripta di Sant'Anastasio opens a cross-section through the city's whole early history: stone slabs of the Roman Forum of Hasta, Lombard burial ground, the foundations and carved capitals of a Romanesque church and monastery, and a lapidary collection gathered from the city's noble palaces, all under one roof.

Why it matters

Asti rarely shows its age so plainly. The site preserves successive phases of the city's early history within a single archaeological complex. The earliest exposed layer is Roman: slabs on the site are remnants of the paving of the Forum of Hasta, which faced the Decumanus Maximus — today's Corso Alfieri — then the city's main public space, lined with its religious, commercial and judicial buildings. Above the Roman level lie Lombard tombs; above those, a Romanesque church with its monastery; and around it all, a museum of carved stone recovered from the city's medieval palaces. Together, the layers connect Roman, Lombard, Romanesque and communal-era Asti.

What to notice

The Roman pavement's large stone slabs mark the Forum's edge relative to the modern street plan, with the Decumanus Maximus—today's Corso Alfieri—passing outside.

The early-medieval layer includes masonry and earth-cut tombs dated to the late seventh through late ninth centuries by radiocarbon analysis. The crypt's own sepulchres date to the eleventh and twelfth centuries, bridging the burial ground and the church above.

The Romanesque church of Sant'Anastasio was built shortly after 1000 AD and, by at least the 11th century, anchored an important women's monastery. What survives is atmospheric rather than intact: three naves that once carried cross vaults on quadrangular pillars and four-semicolumn supports, and a square bell tower of which only the foundations remain. In the museum corridor, the capitals from the church's most monumental phase are lined up for close reading — figurative scenes, angels, crosses, eagles, scrolls and plant motifs carved for a monastery whose spiritual and economic weight was still growing.

The room of noble stonework contains coats of arms of Asti's medieval families, architectural decorations rescued from palaces, and a Gothic fountain stem supported by four carved heads, examples of the city's communal-era domestic stonework.

Context and history

The site's sequence reflects successive uses of this urban block. After its Roman use as a public forum, the site became an early-medieval burial ground. The church of Sant’Anastasio and its women’s monastery later occupied the same block in the cathedral quarter. The monastery's prosperity is written in the scale of the church's second, more monumental building phase and in the carved capitals it commissioned.

The former church and convent now form an archaeological complex and lapidary museum in Asti's cathedral quarter.