Chiesa di San Donato, Barolo site features

The church sits just below the castle, in the body of the village rather than above it, which is the right way round for a building that was a private chapel first and a parish church second.

Inside, the plan is a classic three-nave basilica — a central nave with an aisle on each side — and the space opens upward into an octagonal dome as you approach the high altar. There are six side altars, three to a side.

The floor in front of the high altar is the thing to stand on rather than walk over. The Falletti, lords of Barolo, are buried there. Below the presbytery the sepolcreto of the feudal lords runs from the 1500s down to the extinction of the house — which, since the last marchesa died in 1864, makes it a family vault covering some three hundred years.

It is a village parish church and is used as one. Expect it to be in use, or locked, rather than staffed.

The Falletti tomb

In the floor in front of the high altar. The lords of Barolo are under it. Nothing in the building is more to the point than this: the castle, the wine and the church all carry the same name, and this is where the name stops.

The burial vault under the presbytery

Distinct from the tomb above it. The sepolcreto of the old feudatories, in use from the 1500s until the house became extinct.

The octagonal dome

It opens over the approach to the high altar — the one piece of architectural ambition in an otherwise plain village church, and the reason the interior feels larger than the exterior promises.

The three naves

A central nave and two aisles, the classic basilica arrangement, on a scale that suits a few hundred parishioners.

The six side altars

Three along each aisle. In a church that began as one family's chapel, six lateral altars are a measure of how much it had to grow once the public was let in.

The Romanesque foundation

Not visible as Romanesque any more — the transformation of the 1500s and the rebuilding of the 1700s each covered the last. But it is the reason the church is listed among Romanesque foundations at all, and the reason its site is older than anything you can see.