S. Giacomo Maggiore - Agliano Church
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S. Giacomo Maggiore - Agliano Church
The parish church of San Giacomo il Maggiore is a religious building located in Agliano Terme, in the province of Asti.
The parish church of San Giacomo Maggiore in Agliano stands on the main square of the village on the grounds of a previous 16th century church destroyed in 1637 when the Spanish put Agliano on fire. The current church was built around 1657 under the direction of the master builder Marco Poncino with the help of the wall master Carlo Bonomo, both of Lugano origin. Due to the limited financial resources of the community, the church was built quickly and with lime and bricks of less than optimal quality, so that the parish priests soon began to take on restoration work to avoid its ruin.
In 1815 the many burials dug in the floor caused water infiltrations and the consequent collapse of two pillars on the left. The then parish priest Don Carlo Notari had the pillars rebuilt and entrusted the painter Lorenzo Perretti with the task of painting the frescoed church in the vaults and walls on the sides of the presbytery. In 1915 it was found that all the pillars that supported the vault of the church on the right were collapsing under the weight of the church and repair work began around 1920. The idea of building a new building matured in the minds of the parish priests to come. church until the parish priest Don Giglio Perosino, who entered service in 1962, following the advice of the population, abandoned the project of a new church to devote himself to a demanding restoration and expansion of the parish church which had long been necessary to provide decorously worship needs.
From 1967 the works went on for a few years under the direction of the architect. Don Alessandro Quaglia at the end of which the church had found a worthy and honorable arrangement; the plan has a central nave, with a pair of lateral aisles with three chapels on each side; the apse is rectangular with an eighteenth-century main altar slightly spaced from the back wall. The main facade, embellished in the center by a small entrance portico whose granite columns previously adorned the main door of the church of the monastery of the Carthusian monastery of Asti, is plastered, while the rest of the building is made of exposed brick
. The bell tower, restored in 1983, has a square base and ends with a pyramidal spire. Inside the church, in the chapel dedicated to the Madonna del Suffragio, the polychrome wooden crucifix, recently restored and restored to its original color, dated 1250-1274 as regards the statue of Christ, is visible, while the cross is traced back to the XVIII sec. The hook still present on the cross indicates that in ancient times this must have been hanging above an altar.