Dedicated to Saints Evasius, Projetus, Natale and St. Lawrence, it was consecrated on January 7 of the year 1107 by Pope Paschal II, on the site where a temple dedicated to Jupiter existed as early as the first century AD and later a church from the Liutprandean period dedicated to the martyr Lawrence.
Set on fire in 1215, following the war between the Casalesi and Alessandrini, the Vercellesi, Pavesi and Milanese, it was heavily restored in the 1850s by Vercelli architect Count Edoardo Arborio Mella, at the behest of Bishop Lugi Nazari of Calabiana, architect and archaeologist Luigi Canina and Abbot Antonio Rosmini, against the advice of Antonelli.
It turns out to this day to be one of the most interesting Lombard Romanesque-style cathedrals in Piedmont.
The interior rooms of the Romanesque Cathedral dedicated to St. Evasius are home to the Open Sacristy Route and the Archaeological Route of the attics where many precious reliquaries, golds, textile artifacts of particular value and significant works of sacred art are on display.
Notable among the textiles is the chasuble that belonged to Pius V (16th century).
From the ambulatory, which houses parts of the ancient church's mosaic flooring on the walls that can be dated to the mid-12th century and sculptures from the 12th-16th centuries, we move on to the sacristies in which paintings by Gaudenzio Ferrari, Giorgio Alberini, Pietro Francesco Guala, among others, are preserved.
The tour ends at the 18th-century Chapel of St. Evasius, which leads inside the church hall where a majestic 12th-century wood and silver crucifix is housed.
During the ascent one can admire the medieval structure freed from the thick nineteenth-century plasters in which the openings of the single lancet window on the south side and the access to the external apsidal loggia stand out. Once you reach the access to the attics by means of a metal walkway, suspended on the extrados of the vaults, you walk through the entire southern portion of the building that reveals first the hanging arch crowning of the nave and then, in succession, the ancient structures of the transept nave where the mullioned window freed from the nineteenth-century window frame shines.
Just where the path will seem to end, the visitor will be able to plunge into the limbs of medieval architecture to reach the most hidden decorative elements and then find himself, after an almost vertical descent into the wall thickness, the women's galleries of the atrium. Here all the details of the 20th-century sculptural elements and the majesty of the great cross-arched vault can be admired up close.
During White Night and at city events, the museum conducts evening tours.
Duomo di Sant'Evasio di Casale Monferrato
Address: Largo Monsignor Giuseppe Angrisani, 1, 15033
Phone: +390142452520
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