Chiesa di San Sebastiano

Rebuilt between 1700 and 1708 by the flagellant confraternity of the Disciplinanti Bianchi, the church of San Sebastiano in La Morra marks the spot where the township's medieval parish once stood. Its elegant brick bell tower rose in 1766, its stucco high altar in 1793, preserving a sequence of eighteenth-century additions.

Why it matters

The church is a record of lay devotion, the force that built so much of Italy's sacred architecture. The Disciplinanti Bianchi, the white-hooded flagellant confraternity, financed and carried out the reconstruction in the early eighteenth century, dedicating the new building to Saint Sebastian the Martyr, the plague intercessor. Beneath it lies the site of Santa Maria di Marcenasco, the township's earlier parish church, so the building also guards the memory of the settlement that preceded the hilltop village. The 1766 brick campanile and the 1793 stucco altar give the church a coherent eighteenth-century character distinct from the Baroque paintings in the neighbouring parish church.

What to notice

The facade has two stacked orders and two niches that once held frescoes, now lost, evidence of richer decoration. The brick bell tower's proportions distinguish it from the village's medieval civic tower and record the townscape's later development. Inside, the plan is a single nave with two side chapels, kept deliberately simple. The focus is the high altar in stucco, dated 1793, bearing the painting of Saint Sebastian the Martyr, the dedication image at the centre of the confraternity's cult. The restrained stucco work contrasts with the painted decoration of San Rocco and the parish church.

Context and history

The church's history has several stages. First, the medieval parish of Santa Maria di Marcenasco stood on or near this ground, serving the community before and during its consolidation on the hill; the present church stands over that earlier site, preserving the connection to Santa Maria di Marcenasco. Second, the rebuilding of 1700 to 1708 by the Confraternita dei Disciplinanti Bianchi under the new dedication to Saint Sebastian Martyre gave the township its confraternity church, at the moment when Piedmontese baroque was reshaping religious building everywhere. Third, the ensemble was completed in stages: the handsome brick campanile in 1766 and the stucco high altar in 1793. The result is a building that layers parish memory, confraternity patronage and late-baroque furnishing without pretending to monumentality.