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ASTI |
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In the run-up to its annual Palio, ASTI throws off its sedate air
and hosts street banquets and a medieval market. On the day of the race
itself, the third Sunday in September, there's a thousand-strong
procession of citizens dressed as their fourteenth-century ancestors,
before the frenetic bare-backed horse race around the arena of the Campo
del Palio - followed by the awarding of the palio (banner) to the winner
and all-night feasting and boozing.
The rest of the year the Campo del Palio is a vast, bleak car park, and
there's frankly not a lot to see. The arcaded Piazza Alfieri is
officially the centre of town, behind which the Collegiata di San
Secondo (Mon-Sat 10.45am-noon & 3.30-5.30pm, Sun 3.30-5.30pm) is
dedicated to the city's patron saint, built on the site of the saint's
martyrdom in the second century. There's nothing left of the second-century
church but there is a fine sixth-century crypt, its columns so slender
that they seem on the verge of toppling over. As for the rest of the
church, it's a slick, early-Gothic construction, with neat red-brick
columns topped with tidily carved capitals and in the left aisle a
polyptych by one of Asti's Renaissance artists, Gandolfino d'Asti. The
Palio banners are also kept here, housed in a heavily ornate Baroque
chapel, along with the Carroccio - a sacred war chariot used in medieval
times.
The main street, Corso Alfieri , slices through the town from the Piazza
Alfieri, to the east of which the church of San Pietro at Corso Alfieri
2 (Tues-Fri 9am-1pm & 3-5pm, Sat 10am-1pm & 3-6pm, Sun 10am-1pm) has a
circular twelfth-century Baptistry , now used as an exhibition space,
and a museum , housed in what was a pilgrim's hospice, displaying an odd
- and badly labelled - assortment of Roman and Egyptian artefacts. At
the other end of the Corso, the Torre Rossa is a medieval tower with a
chequered top, built on the foundations of the Roman tower in which San
Secondo, a Roman soldier, was imprisoned before being killed.
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