Chiesa di Sant'Alessandro (Santi Alessandro e Carlo)

Sant'Alessandro is Alessandria's great Baroque church, begun in 1742 for two brother bishops and dedicated to the city's patron saint. Behind a curving two-storey facade lie frescoed vaults, a late-medieval crucifix, a rare 16th-century choir and the local legend of geese.

Why it matters

Sant'Alessandro is a major Baroque church in Alessandria. Dedicated to Pope Alexander I, the martyr who gave the city its name, and to St Charles Borromeo, it was funded by the brothers Francesco Giuseppe and Giovanni Mercurino Antonio Arborio di Gattinara, both bishops and both Barnabites, and designed by Domenico Caselli. The first stone was laid on 9 September 1742 and the church was consecrated on 7 May 1758. For a short but crucial period after Napoleon's demolition of the medieval cathedral, it even served the cathedral chapter as a pro-cathedral, and Pope Pius VII stayed here in April 1805 returning from Napoleon's coronation.

What to notice

• The facade's two orders of concave and convex surfaces: the lower order was rebuilt from 1845 by Gaetano Giaccheri and the whole composition was only completed in 1908, crowned by a statue of Saint Alexander on the attic.
• The wide single nave with four side chapels, terminating in a presbyterium with three altarpieces: the Redeemer, begun by Francesco De Laurentiis in 1786–1787 and finished by Saverio De Rosa, flanked by De Rosa's Saint Charles Borromeo and Saint Alexander.
• The vault decoration of 1903, largely by Rodolfo Gambini, and frescoes by Luigi Morgari showing the martyrdom of Pope Alexander I.
• A 15th-century wooden crucifix on the left wall and the late-16th-century wooden choir that came from the city's old cathedral.
• The rococò compass and confessionals, and the 1842 organ built by the Pavia organbuilder Giovanni Battista Lingiardi.
• A fresco of "Baudolino e le oche", recalling the popular legend in which wild geese — evil spirits — flee the presence of the city's bishop, a local story.

Context and history

The Barnabites had been in Alessandria since around 1641, and their church was conceived as a worthy setting for the cult of the city's patron. After the order's suppression in 1802 the cathedral chapter used the building until 1810, when the new Duomo was ready. The dedication to Saints Alessandro and Carlo joined the local patron to Charles Borromeo, the great Milanese archbishop born at Arona. The city's patronal feast falls on 3 May, the traditional date of Pope Alexander I's martyrdom, which popular tradition also reads as the "birthday" of Alessandria itself, through an ancient confusion between the martyr pope and Pope Alexander III. In the crypt rest the remains of the scholar Giulio Cesare Cordara, a noted figure of 18th-century Piedmontese letters.