Chiesa di Santa Croce

Chiesa di Santa Croce stands on the south side of Piazza Carlo Emanuele II, the broad square known as Piazza Carlina. Its entrance faces the regular geometry of the piazza. Above it, the dome and lantern puncture the skyline.

Filippo Juvarra designed the church, which rose around 1720 within a convent of Lateran canonesses. A single elliptical nave rises beneath a high drum and lantern. Windows in both structures cast shifting bands of daylight across the curved interior. The façade reached completion in 1873, when military engineers also worked on the dome for the Cavour monument’s inauguration.

The former convent served as a military hospital until 1914 and later became a soldiers’ home. Between 1988 and 1993, Mario Federico Roggero adapted much of it for the university science faculty. Water infiltration had caused salt crystallisation and detachments around the drum and lantern. Copper sheets replaced the dome’s roof covering during conservation work in the 1990s. Look towards the lantern, where daylight gives the Baroque interior its theatrical depth.