The old town

St Mary Mayor’s Church

It probably began as a parish church of the castle, under the control of the Provost of San Lorenzo of Oulx and is surely the oldest church in Avigliana in doing plebean services and, since the counter-reform, vicarial services.
The centre, since medieval times, of annual public meetings at Epiphany. Its existence is documented as from the 12th century and confirmed by rare architectural and archaeological remains.

Via Santa Maria, 7
10051 Avigliana TO

0119311873

Of the following gothic phases only little can be found: in the elevation of the bell tower, decorated like San Pietro and San Giovanni, with bowls in polychromatic ceramic pottery; in the chapel of a family tomb, sited on the southern side and later used as sacristy, where faint traces of a fresco can still be seen and dated around the end of the 14th century; an apse, with his pentagonal shape, from the middle of the 15th century.
Just before 1673, the building was thoroughly restructured. It simplified the construction plan by increasing it with a bay completing the actual façade, but reducing it to one nave, with only two side chapels: this was modified in the 19 and the beginning of the 20th century. Of the internal furnishing, constantly renewed and with almost a thousand years of existence, there is hardly a trace: even the early 18th century wooden pulpit, which came from the church of San Agostino Avigliano, has long disappeared.

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