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Santuario della Consolata

The sanctuary of Turin's patron saint, in the Quadrilatero Romano: the Romanesque bell tower of Sant'Andrea, Guarini's church, Juvarra's altar, feast day on 20 June.

The Santuario della Consolata, dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Consolata, is Turin's main Marian shrine and the church of the city's patron saint. It stands in the Quadrilatero Romano, along via della Consolata: where this street crosses via Garibaldi once opened the Porta Segusina of Augusta Taurinorum.[1] It is a building in layers: an eleventh-century Romanesque bell tower, the church designed by Guarino Guarini, the altar by Filippo Juvarra and the chapels added at the start of the twentieth century. Every 20 June the feast of the Consolata brings a procession through the streets of the historic centre, where coloured votive lights are lit at the windows of the old houses.[2]

Sant'Andrea and the legend of the blind man of Briçon

The present church grew up over that of Sant'Andrea, built in the eleventh century.[3] Of that building only the bell tower still stands, which the 1937 Enciclopedia Italiana listed among the city's few Romanesque structures as “the bell tower of S. Andrea, now of the Consolata”.[1]

A centuries-old founding legend is tied to the icon venerated in the sanctuary. According to tradition the image of the Madonna, brought to Piedmont by a bishop of Vercelli, was hidden in the time of bishop Claudio, who was hostile to the veneration of images, found again in 1015 and then lost once more when the soldiers of emperor Henry IV destroyed the chapel that housed it. On 20 June 1104 Jean Ravais, a young nobleman from Briçon blind from birth, who had reached Turin after crossing Susa and Rivoli, is said to have regained his sight and glimpsed the bell tower of Sant'Andrea in the distance; bishop Mainardo had the ruins dug up and the image was found.[2] The episode is not borne out by official records; a 1595 plaque inside the church appears to confirm it.[2] The feast day comes from that legendary date.

Guarini, Juvarra and the city's consecration

In 1675 the new temple was raised over the ancient church to a design by Guarini;[3] the Enciclopedia Italiana's entry on the architect credits him with “the initial design of the church of the Consolata”.[4] In the eighteenth century the sanctuary received the main altars designed by Juvarra, dated 1729; in the years immediately after (1730–34) the Messina-born architect designed the altar of the church of the Santi Martiri.[5]

The tie with the city administration goes back to those years. In 1714 the City formally consecrated itself to the Consolata; the act of consecration was shown by the rector to the mayor during a visit in 2016.[6] More than a century later, during the 1835 cholera epidemic, the council of decurions renewed the bond with a public vow. On 1 September 1835 mayor Carlo Palio di Rinco had it minuted that:[6]

“the Body of Decurions unanimously resolves to make, through an express vow directed solely to this end, a public declaration of religious feeling and of the devotion to the Blessed Virgin which he, on behalf of the whole population of Turin, here solemnly declares to profess”

Order of the Body of Decurions of Turin, 1 September 1835

The fruit of that vow is the column with the statue of the Madonna in the square in front of the church, made in 1836 by the sculptor Giuseppe Bogliani together with Ferdinando Caronesi.[7] On the same square, since 1763, stands the café of the bicerin, opened by the lemonade-seller Giuseppe Dentis in a shop facing the sanctuary's entrance.[8]

Ceppi's chapels and Allamano's rectorship

At the end of summer 1880 Giuseppe Allamano was appointed rector of the sanctuary; born in 1851 in Castelnuovo d'Asti, he had spent four years at don Bosco's oratory in Valdocco and was a nephew, on his mother's side, of don Giuseppe Cafasso, the priest known for his care of those condemned to death. Allamano found the Consolata in a difficult state: he saw to its restoration and its liturgy, took charge of the workers' associations already linked to the church and opened the Laboratorio della Consolata for young seamstresses.[9]

Under his rectorship the architect Carlo Ceppi enlarged the church between 1899 and 1904: he replaced the old ambulatory with four oval side chapels, covered by elliptical small domes and linked to the adjoining church of Sant'Andrea.[10]

A missionary enterprise was also born from the sanctuary. Having recovered from a serious case of pneumonia between 28 and 29 January 1900, Allamano obtained on 24 April of that year the approval of cardinal Agostino Richelmy, archbishop of Turin, and answered with the Gospel words “at your word I will let down the nets”.[9] On 29 January 1901 he founded the Consolata Missionaries,[9] an institute meant to train priests for missions abroad and approved by the Holy See in 1923;[11] the Consolata Missionary Sisters followed in 1910. The first expeditions left for Kenya in 1909 and for Ethiopia in 1913. Allamano died in Turin on 16 February 1926, was beatified on 7 October 1990 and declared a saint on 20 October 2024.[9]

Recent restorations and discoveries

A long programme of works, begun in 2009 by the sanctuary together with Piedmont's heritage authorities, has brought the medieval church back to light.[3] In September 2016 mayor Chiara Appendino visited, with the rector don Michele Olivero, the remains of the Romanesque building that had emerged from the archaeological excavations; the City council is among those funding the works.[6] In February 2019 the Romanesque-era frescoes that had decorated the first bays of Sant'Andrea were unveiled, preserved within the masonry of the Convitto chapel: after 240 days of work by the Centro Conservazione e Restauro of La Venaria Reale, with the support of the Fondazione CRT and donations from 278 citizens, a figure identified with the patriarch Abraham reappeared, along with two large figures with scrolls and two faces, one possibly of Saint Benedict.[3]

The bell tower, too, has had its own works. The largest bell, cast in 1940 by the Achille Mazzola foundry of Valduggia and one of the two biggest in Piedmont, is one of nine in the tower; the failure of a beam in the bell-cage required the structure to be rebuilt, funded with 110,000 euros by the Fondazione La Stampa – Specchio dei Tempi, linked to La Stampa. It rang again on 20 June 2017, before the solemn mass presided over by archbishop Cesare Nosiglia.[12]

The feast of 20 June

The feast of the patron saint remains the city's most popular religious occasion: a solemn mass said by the archbishop in the morning and, in the evening, a procession that sets out from via della Consolata and crosses piazza Arbarello, corso Siccardi, via Bertola and other streets of the city.[12] For the Jubilee of Mercy, on 20 June 2016 Nosiglia opened a Holy Door there, the diocese's fourth after those of the Cathedral, the great church of the Piccola Casa della Divina Provvidenza and the Ferrante Aporti juvenile detention institute; in his homily he recalled that love “requires that the needs of one's neighbour govern human and also financial commitment”.[13] The sanctuary belongs to the Archdiocese of Turin.

Related articles: Cappella della Sindone, Gran Madre di Dio, Guarino Guarini, Palazzo Carignano, Pietro Micca, Real Chiesa di San Lorenzo

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Sources

  1. Treccani – Enciclopedia Italiana (1937)
  2. TorinoClick – Città di Torino — 22 May 2015
  3. Mole24 — 7 February 2019
  4. Treccani – Enciclopedia Italiana
  5. Treccani – Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani
  6. TorinoClick – Città di Torino — 8 September 2016
  7. Mole24 — 28 January 2026
  8. Caffè Al Bicerin
  9. Mole24 — 3 May 2026
  10. Treccani – Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani
  11. Treccani – Enciclopedia on line
  12. Mole24 — 22 June 2017
  13. TorinoClick – Città di Torino — 20 June 2016

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