Basilica di San Giacomo

Facing a small square just off Piazza Cisterna in Biella's hilltop Piazzo, the Basilica di San Giacomo is the oldest surviving medieval building in the quarter. Documented by 1180 and consecrated in its present form in 1227, it preserves an austerity that later fashions never erased.

Why it matters

San Giacomo is a central medieval building in the Borgo del Piazzo. The church is the most ancient medieval structure still standing in the borgo, mentioned in documents from 1180 — barely two decades after the quarter itself was founded in 1160. Its fortune, unusually, was to remain poor: the sobriety that later centuries might have "corrected" with baroque decoration saved its Gothic character intact, so what you see today is close in spirit to the church the merchant families of the 13th century knew. It stands beside Palazzo Gromo di Ternengo and near Piazza Cisterna, and holds the title of basilica.

What to notice

The church faces a small square on the borgo's south side, opposite Palazzo Gromo di Ternengo. The building you see is the church consecrated in 1227 by Bishop Ugo di Sessa, remodelled in the centuries after: the bell tower was added later but is already recorded in documents of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, and its vertical weight remains the strongest visual signature of the church within the quarter's low skyline of porticoed houses. Stucco applied in 1862 covers parts of the medieval structure. The church preserves a fifteenth-century triptych by Daniele de Bosis depicting the Madonna and Child with Saints Gottardo and Giacomo.

Context and history

San Giacomo grew with the Borgo del Piazzo. Bishop Uguccione of Vercelli founded the hilltop borgo in 1160 as a secure residence, and a church dedicated to San Giacomo is recorded there by 1180; what remains of that first building cannot be determined, and the structure still standing is the church consecrated in 1227 by Bishop Ugo di Sessa, remodelled in subsequent centuries, its bell tower recorded by the turn of the fourteenth century and its portico added in the seventeenth. As the noble palazzi multiplied around it, the church remained the parish and spiritual centre of the quarter, its plain Gothic fabric untouched by the baroque remakings that transformed so many Piedmontese churches in the 17th and 18th centuries. In recognition of its antiquity and role, it was granted the status of basilica. The church remained an important part of the quarter after its aristocratic period declined.