Chiesa Romanica di Santa Maria

Site history: The Romanesque church of S. Maria appears in the register of the Asti churches of 1345, but its construction is certainly about a century earlier. It had an adjoining cemetery but, already in 1585, the pastoral visit report notes its distance from the concentric that had formed and attested in a higher position, defining it as a "country church". Partially restored in 2002, but now in a state of neglect. Site description: The façade with an anachronistic Baroque oculus and a rusty gate to replace a door, stolen long ago, as well as the badly plastered north and south sides, show that at the end of the seventeenth century the building was practically rebuilt by reusing the original bricks with much approximation and with the addition of buttresses. The interior is in a state of total abandonment but still contains the panel relating to the static consolidation of 2002 which was limited to the refurbishment of the roof. The 1693 fresco inside the apse is probably irrecoverable but apparently modestly made. The only original part is the lower half of the apse, while the upper part, particularly clumsy and disproportionate, shows that it has undergone the