Chiesa di Santa Caterina

Beside a Roman tower on Asti's principal street, the city's only elliptical-plan church rises under a dome that carries it more than thirty-five metres above the pavement. Santa Caterina replaced a medieval church in the 1760s, keeps its baroque dignity intact, and guards the tomb of a nineteenth-century bishop of the city.

Why it matters

Santa Caterina was the only Astigian church included in the catalogue of the 1963 exhibition on Piedmontese Baroque. Its plan is the reason: an oval centre from which four chapels radiate, crowned by an elliptical dome that rises through a total height of more than 35 metres from the pavement. The building also condenses a thousand years of the city's layering, for it stands next to the Torre Rossa, the Roman-based tower that once served as the bell tower of the very church Santa Caterina replaced — and which legend made the prison of San Secondo before his martyrdom. Opened for worship in 1773, it stands on a principal eastward street of the historic centre.

What to notice

Beside Torre Rossa, the church's neoclassical facade of brick and lime plaster, with Corinthian columns and pilasters carrying a pediment and upper cornice, stands against the tower's tufa-and-brick mass. Inside, the oval plan opens into four radiating chapels. Look up: the elliptical dome, about 22 metres tall and 20 wide in itself, is pierced by four arched windows that light figures of Saint Peter, Saint Paul, Saint Francis of Assisi and Saint Joseph on its walls. Behind the main altar hangs a restored altarpiece by the Turin painter Ignazio Nepote, showing Saint Catherine, Saint Secondo and the seven Servite founders, flanked by three white stucco statues of the theological virtues — Faith, Hope and Charity. The fourteen Via Crucis panels are attributed to Monsignor Faà di Bruno, bishop of Asti, who died in 1829 and is buried in this church.

Context and history

Until 1732 the site carried the church of San Secondo della Torre Rossa, built by Benedictines shortly before 1070, who raised the Roman tower by two storeys to serve as its campanile. The dilapidated Romanesque church was demolished in 1732; its stone portal survives on Corso Alfieri. Reconstruction began after a delay of more than three decades, and the church opened for worship in 1773 and was consecrated in 1818. An earlier convent on the site, destroyed in the sixteenth century, had served as a commenda offering lodging to the poor, pilgrims, merchants and travellers, a charitable strand that suits the church's position on the road into town. The 1963 exhibition catalogue fixed the church's reputation as Asti's representative of Piedmontese baroque.