Discover Chiesa di San Donato, Barolo

The chiesa di San Donato is the parish church of Barolo, in the province of Cuneo, and belongs to the diocese of Alba.

Its age is given differently by different sources, and the difference is real rather than careless. The church is described as Romanesque in origin; as dating to the 15th century; as having been restructured in the middle of the 16th; and the building you walk into as a reconstruction of the first half of the 18th century. All of those can be true of the same site, and together they describe a church rebuilt twice on the same ground.

What is not in dispute is whose church it was. It began as a private chapel of the Falletti, the family that held the castle above it, and was enlarged afterwards so that it could be opened to public worship. The village got its parish church by inheriting a family's chapel.

The Falletti are still in it. They are buried in the tomb in front of the high altar, and beneath the presbytery lies the burial vault of the old feudal lords, from the 1500s until the line died out.

The church is best read as three buildings on one footprint.

The Romanesque plan is the first, and survives only as the reason the site is old. No elevation of it is visible.

The 16th-century transformation is the second. This is the campaign that converted a family chapel into something a parish could use, and it is tied to the same century in which the Falletti began burying their dead beneath the presbytery.

The 18th-century reconstruction is what you actually see, and it is a coherent piece of design rather than a patch. The three naves give the classic basilica section; the octagonal dome is set where the nave meets the sanctuary, so that the volume rises at exactly the point the eye is already travelling towards; and the six lateral altars are distributed along the aisles.

An octagonal dome on a village parish church is the detail worth noticing. It is a form that belongs to larger Piedmontese churches, and it is here because the family that paid for the building was not a village family.

Each campaign built over the last on the same ground, which is why so little of the earlier work can be seen.

The chapel came first, raised for the Falletti, sized for a household rather than a congregation.

The enlargement is the decisive structural act: the chapel was extended in order to open it to public worship. A building that had to hold a family now had to hold a village, and the fabric had to grow to take it.

The mid-16th-century restructuring reworked that enlarged church. Beneath it, the sepolcreto was cut under the presbytery, and it stayed in use for some three centuries.

The 18th-century rebuilding went furthest: the present church is a reconstruction of the old one, not a remodelling of it. That is when the three naves were laid out and the octagonal dome raised over the approach to the high altar. The tomb in front of that altar was kept where it was.

How old is it? Three answers, all sourced, all partly right. The plan is Romanesque; one source dates the church to the 15th century; it was restructured in the mid-1500s; and the building standing today is a reconstruction of the first half of the 1700s. The site is old, the fabric is 18th-century.

Was it always the parish church? No. It began as the private chapel of the Falletti and was enlarged afterwards so it could be opened to public worship.

Are the Falletti really buried here? Yes. In the tomb in front of the high altar, and in the sepolcreto beneath the presbytery, which held the old feudal lords from the 1500s until the family died out.

What is there to see inside? Three naves, an octagonal dome over the approach to the high altar, and six side altars.

Is there an admission charge? None is given, and the village's guide publishes no visiting hours either. It is a working church of the diocese of Alba.

Is this the San Donato with the 1683 rebuilding? No — that is a different church of the same dedication, at Robilante in the diocese of Cuneo-Fossano. The two are routinely confused because the name is identical.