Chiesa della Misericordia

Chiesa della Misericordia stands along a narrow street in Italy, with a compact neoclassical façade facing the entrance. Its triangular pediment, dentils, and four Ionic columns create a calm stone frontage.

Inside, a Greek-cross plan gathers beneath two domes, directing light towards the presbytery and its artworks. The confraternity of San Giovanni Decollato acquired the church from Santa Croce in 1720 and made it their permanent seat. Eighteenth-century rebuilding under engineer Filippo Nicolis di Robilant reshaped the vaults and reordered the presbytery. Two side chapels appeared in 1753, with steps made from Gassino stone. Francesco Benedetto Feroggio created the polychrome-marble high altar in 1792, while a painting attributed to Federico Zuccari shows Saint John the Baptist’s beheading behind it. Local workshops supplied sculptural and stucco decoration, and the Concone brothers built the organ in 1758.

The former mission of accompanying condemned people survives through registers, black hoods, and ceremonial objects kept inside. Light bombing damage in 1942 preceded a restoration completed in 2009, when bones linked to the confraternity’s history were uncovered. Traditional Latin Mass continues beneath the two domes, where altar, painting, sculpture, and preserved objects occupy the same concentrated space.