Church of San Giuseppe, Alba

The church of San Giuseppe in Alba, is located in the district that was once called Borgo San Lorenzo, at the confluence of the current Via Manzoni with Via Vernazza, where there is an open space called San Giuseppe. The building looks like a large parallelepiped volume with a longitudinal hut-like development, running along via Manzoni. At the first part of the wall towards the street is the secondary volume of the side chapels, while, on the opposite side, the short protrusion of the chapel of the Crucifix, which rises just above the level of the cornices, is barely distinguishable from the roofs.

The set of buildings was built at various times between 1642 and the mid-eighteenth century. The authorization of Bishop Brizio for the construction of the bell tower dates back to 1645. In 1653 the operations corresponding to the construction of the main body of the church and the sacristy must probably be considered completed. The side chapels, on the other hand, remain excluded, the construction of which began only in the 1980s, driven by the leading exponents of the local nobility. Even later is the pentagonal chapel of the Crucifix, of which there is evidence between 1710 and 1720, while the construction of the bell tower, begun in 1689, based on a project drawing “from Turin”, will continue until it ends in 1830.

Today the church is home to the San Giuseppe Cultural Center, a non-functional laboratory for cultural and educational activities that aims to stimulate growth and promotion aimed at protecting and enhancing the historical, artistic and archaeological heritage thanks to the work of Volunteering.

The archaeological path under the Church of San Giuseppe

The visit of the ruins returned from the archaeological excavations conducted on the site of the church of San Giuseppe provides a path through the underlying structure of the building which, from the seventeenth-century wall structures, reaches up to the medieval and Roman remains on which this was built. The path has been physically traced creating the connections between two existing cellars, one very large and placed under the church, a second smaller one, existing under the Chapel of the Crucifix of the same church.