Palazzo Civico e Torre Municipale

Cherasco's Palazzo Civico and adjacent Torre Municipale preserve layers of the town's civic history. The restored façade combines Gothic arches, Renaissance friezes and an eighteenth-century fresco; the tower contains a lunar calendar and a Baroque sundial.

Why it matters

The palace façade brings together civic identity and local geography. An eighteenth-century allegorical fresco represents the Tanaro and Stura rivers and their confluence, while the tower's timekeeping instruments document historical ways of reading the sky and calendar.

What to notice

The façade retains Gothic arcading and decorative friezes from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. An eighteenth-century fresco shows figures representing the Tanaro and Stura rivers beside the city's red cross on a white field. On the tower, restoration revealed a lunar calendar depicting the moon's phases in a woodland scene and a Baroque sundial on the south side.

Context and history

Palazzo Civico stands on Piazza Carlo Alberto in the grid-planned centre of Cherasco, founded in the thirteenth century. Its decoration accumulated over successive centuries. Recent restoration removed later plaster from the tower, revealing the lunar calendar and sundial that had been concealed beneath it.