Chiesa di San Giovanni

Before the cathedral existed, San Giovanni was Saluzzo's principal church. Built for the Dominicans in Gothic style from 1330 and completed in 1504, it keeps something the Duomo does not: the funerary chapel of Marquis Ludovico II, clad in green-grey Sampeyre stone, with the marquis's 1508 tomb by the sculptor Benedetto Briosco.

Why it matters

This church tells the older half of Saluzzo's religious history. A chapel dedicated to Saint John stood here by 1281; from 1325 the site belonged to the Dominicans, whose convent made the church the city's main place of worship until the new cathedral was finished around 1501. Protected and favoured by the marquises of Saluzzo, it received the dynasty's most important burial commission: the apse, known as the cappella del Santo Sepolcro, was rebuilt from 1474 and completed in 1504 in a late-Gothic style with Burgundian connections, and Ludovico II — the marquis who had made La Castiglia a Renaissance residence — was buried there, his funerary monument carved around 1508 by the Lombard sculptor Benedetto Briosco. The church's dynastic mausoleum complements the history presented at the fortress and civic museum.

What to notice

The exterior has a bare, unfinished Gothic facade with an ogival portal (restored in 1929) and a low, massive bell tower of 1376 topped by an octagonal spire — nothing prepares you for the apse, a semi-octagon of squared stone on a high base, flanked by two small turrets and clad inside in grey-green Sampeyre stone from the nearby valley. Its design from 1474 has been attributed to Antoine Le Moiturier, with completion by local masters; treat the attribution as traditional rather than documented fact. Opposite the tomb stands an empty arcosolium prepared for Margherita di Foix, Ludovico II's widow, who was buried in Spain instead — a small story of dynastic marriage with a European reach. Elsewhere, the Passion frescoes in the chapel of Santi Crispino e Crispiniano, datable to the third decade of the fifteenth century, the 1535 altarpiece by Pascale Oddone, and the gilded wooden tabernacle of 1610 on the high altar. The cloister along the flank — dated 1416 by the specialist database and 1466 under Ludovico I by the municipality — leads toward a refectory with frescoes and a polychrome terracotta Visitation relief; the Cavassa chapel opens off its west side through a white-marble portal by Matteo Sanmicheli. The late-fifteenth-century wooden choir came from the Abbey of Sant'Antonio di Ranverso.

Context and history

The building's chronology is unusually well traced. The first chapel of 1281 was succeeded when the Dominicans established themselves from 1325; the main Gothic construction began in 1330, the church was lengthened by two bays around 1370, with the squat bell tower and its octagonal spire rising in 1376, and the triangular cloister followed — dated 1416 by the specialist database and 1466 under Ludovico I by the municipality — of which the ogival portal toward via Tapparelli is the oldest visible remnant. The apsidal section was extended again in 1480–87, and the works ended in 1504 with the completion of the apse and Ludovico II's funerary chapel — the same campaign generation that produced the new cathedral on the other side of the centre, which displaced San Giovanni as the city's principal church when it was completed around 1501 and the diocese was created in 1511. The conventual complex continued in religious and civic use, and the church's monuments tie it directly to the sites around it: Ludovico II's court painter Hans Clemer worked for the same dynasty at Casa Cavassa , while the Cavassa chapel off the cloister keeps its white-marble portal by Matteo Sanmicheli.