Museo Diocesano San Giovanni

Next to Asti's cathedral rises an older church with a newer role: San Giovanni, considered by many scholars the city's first cathedral, now holds the Diocesan Museum that preserves the Cathedral's treasure — a Gothic wooden choir from 1477, medieval statues and a crypt of reused Roman capitals beneath floors that reach back to the 1st century AD.

Why it matters

The Museo Diocesano San Giovanni brings together sacred art and the archaeology of Asti's early Christian history. The former church is regarded as a possible early cathedral, with origins around the sixth century; its fabric includes a crypt of the 9th–10th centuries whose columns were reused from Roman and early medieval buildings, and a mosaic floor of the 1st–2nd century AD uncovered by recent excavations, probably redeployed in the early Christian era for the bishop's residence (domus ecclesiae).

What to notice

The Gothic wooden choir, carved by Baldino da Surso in 1477, has stalls that once served the cathedral's canons; its tracery exemplifies late-medieval woodworking.

Two statues anchor the medieval holdings. The wooden Santa Coronata of the 14th century represents the crowned martyr in painted sculpture, while a 14th-century sandstone statue of San Giovanni Battista stands in the crypt itself, returning a figure to the building's most ancient space.

The building itself preserves archaeological layers. The crypt, with its four columns of reutilisation — Roman shafts, three of them in Egyptian red porphyry, and early medieval capitals mixed in the piering — shows how early medieval builders recycled the classical city around them. Recent excavation within the complex exposed the Roman mosaic pavement, a rare instance where a diocesan museum displays pre-Christian floors as part of its own foundation story. Restoration work from 2001 to 2010 integrated the church, crypt and display spaces into the Spazio San Giovanni exhibition.

Context and history

San Giovanni may have served as an early cathedral before the present Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta e San Gottardo took over that role nearby. Through the early Middle Ages the church kept its importance — the 9th–10th-century crypt with its spolia columns belongs to that era of continuity — and the Roman mosaic beneath it shows the site was significant ground even before Christianity, probably incorporated into the episcopal complex in the paleo-Christian period.

After regular worship ceased, the building was adapted as a diocesan museum to conserve and interpret liturgical objects. Asti's museum opened in the restored San Giovanni after the 2001–2010 works, which created the Spazio San Giovanni and made the building's stratigraphy part of the display. The museum preserves objects from the cathedral's heritage.