Cattedrale di San Donato

The cathedral of San Donato is the major religious and architectural landmark of Mondovì's hilltop rione Piazza. Designed in 1739 by Francesco Gallo and completed by the leading Piedmontese architects of the following decades, it replaced the medieval cathedral with a Greek-cross interior crowned by a dome, and still houses the bishop's throne of the Diocese of Mondovì.

Why it matters

The cathedral stands along the line of the medieval walls. Its interest is architectural as much as devotional: the plan is a Greek cross into which four smaller domed Greek crosses are inscribed, a geometric game that gives the interior an unusual rhythm of light and shadow. The building also preserves works gathered from earlier diocesan churches of the territory.

What to notice

• The sandstone façade, monumental portal and statuary contrast with the exposed brick used across much of the rione.
• The dome system has a large central cupola and four smaller Greek-cross volumes around it.
• The Cappella del Suffragio, completed in 1783 to Filippo Nicolis di Robilant's design and faced in polychrome marbles, holds a late-eighteenth-century alabaster Crucifix by Giuseppe Giudice of Turin and paintings of the Nativity of the Virgin by Giovenale Bongiovanni of Pianfei.
• The fresco programme includes Luigi Harthman's Glorification of San Pio V with the Four Evangelists and Mysteries of the Rosary; Andrea Vinai's Coronation of the Madonna and prophets; and Emilio Morgari's Martyrdom of San Donato in the apse.
• The marble main altar and presbyterium were built to Gallo's design under Vittone's direction. The nineteenth-century choir was partly brought from the Reggia di Valcasotto and includes a Virgin and Child by Sebastiano Taricco of Cherasco.
• The marble bust of Pope Pius V, bishop of Mondovì from 1560 to 1566, stands before the bishop's throne.

Context and history

Mondovì's medieval cathedral did not stand here; the fortified citadel built for Duke Emanuele Filiberto between 1573 and 1576 absorbed the Renaissance duomo, and the city's principal church migrated to its present position on the walls of rione Piazza. Francesco Gallo, a native of Mondovì who became one of the leading architects of the Piedmontese baroque, drew up the design in 1739. Work stretched over roughly twenty years, with Benedetto Alfieri and Filippo Nicolis di Robilant completing what Gallo had begun. The interior decoration then accumulated across the later 18th and 19th centuries, as painters and sculptors from the diocese and from Turin filled the vaults, chapels and choir. Pius V's tenure as bishop of the city, before his papacy, anchors the cathedral's place in the wider Catholic history of the region.