spinner-caricamento
Share

The abbey of Santa Maria di Vezzolano is a religious building in Romanesque and Gothic style, one of the most important medieval monuments in Piedmont, located in the municipality of Albugnano in the province of Asti. The first document in which the Ecclesia di Santa Maria di Vezzolano is mentioned dates back to 1095: it is the investiture of Theodulus and Egidio ad officiales, with the commitment to abide by some shared precepts and to live according to the canonical rule, probably that of Sant'Agostino, later attested in Vezzolano by papal bulls of 1176 and 1182. Located between the dioceses of Vercelli, Asti, Turin and Ivrea, close to the powerful municipalities of Asti and Chieri, the Canonica di Vezzolano testifies with its important medieval works of art a long period of splendor between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, followed by a slow decline, which can be symbolically enclosed in two dates: 1405, the year in which the rectory was granted in commendation to abbots residing elsewhere, and 1800, when the Napoleonic administration expropriated its assets, transforming the church into a rural chapel of the parish of Albugnano and the frescoed cloister into a granary. In 1937 the complex was sold to the State and handed over to the Superintendence for Architectural Heritage. The oriented church, that is with the apsidal part facing east, originally had a basilica-type plan, or with three naves, which was modified in the 13th century, when the right aisle was transformed into the north side of the cloister. The salient façade, in terracotta with horizontal bands of sandstone, has a rich sculptural decoration of transalpine connotation concentrated in the central part. The interior is in early Gothic forms: the central nave is divided by a pier (or jubè), a rare architectural structure on columns, on which a polychrome bas-relief with two superimposed registers depicting the Patriarchs and Stories of the Virgin is spread, referable to the third decade of the thirteenth century even if it bears the date 1189; on the sides of the central window of the apse a polychrome sculpture of Antelamic derivation (late 12th century) represents the Annunciation. In the cloister, one of the best preserved in Piedmont, there are sculpted capitals and an important cycle of fourteenth-century frescoes, with the remarkable representation of the Contrast of the three living and the three dead.

Timetable and tickets

Address

Località Vezzolano, 35
14020 Albugnano

Contacts

Discounts and prices’ reductions with the Artsupp Card

With the Artsupp Card you can get, for the first time, discounts and reduced entrance tickets for Italian museums .

Discover more

Related searches