Chiesa di Nostra Donna

Nostra Donna is the survivor among Mondovì's religious buildings: a Franciscan church and convent raised in the late 15th century, reshaped by the baroque architect Francesco Gallo, and handed over to the city's schools. Its cloister and frescoed chapel survive inside the block that now holds the licei, a rare case of medieval art embedded in a working school.

Why it matters

The complex, also known as Santa Maria delle Grazie, dates to roughly 1470 to 1480, which makes it among the oldest standing fabric in rione Piazza. Its fresco decoration of the Adoration of the Magi and the Adoration of the Shepherds, dated around 1480, belongs to the generations immediately before the city's baroque transformation. The later history is equally telling: after the convent's suppression the buildings became the seat of the licei, so the site records both the religious founding of Mondovì Piazza and its 19th- and 20th-century educational life. Fondo Ambiente Italiano lists the former convent among the heritage places of the territory.

What to notice

• The cloister, the quietest surviving element of the Franciscan plan, framed by the school buildings that grew around it.
• The chapel of the licei, the residual core of the original four-naved church, with frescoes of the 1500s and 1600s including the Adoration scenes.
• The layers of intervention attributed to Francesco Gallo, visible in the modifications the convent underwent long after its founding.
• The church is set along the ancient Via ad Planum beneath the Belvedere walls.

Context and history

Franciscan presence shaped rione Piazza from its beginnings, and Nostra Donna was among its principal expressions: church and convent rose between about 1470 and 1480 on the route that led downhill towards the lower town, the ancient Via ad Planum. The church originally had four naves, an unusually broad structure for the site. Over the following centuries the complex was altered, with interventions attributed to Francesco Gallo, the same Monregalese architect responsible for the cathedral and several rione churches. When religious orders were suppressed, the buildings passed to civic use and eventually housed the high schools, including the Liceo Classico Beccaria, whose historic science collections are now catalogued as the Musei dei Licei. Within the adapted complex the old chapel retained its painted walls, so the frescoes of the Magi and the Shepherds survived inside an educational building rather than a church.