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Mondovì Cathedral is a Roman Catholic cathedral in Province of Cuneo, Piedmont, dedicated to Saint Donatus of Arezzo. Several buildings were used over the centuries for the cathedral of the diocese. The first was the pieve of San Donato (12th century), which was replaced at the beginning of the 16th century by a new Renaissance church, which was demolished by order of Emmanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy, in 1574. The church of San Francesco was then declared the cathedral, to be replaced in its turn by the present one, which was built between 1743 and 1753 to designs by the architect Francesco Gallo, and consecrated ten years later by Bishop Michele Casati.
The cathedral is well-supplied with works of art, many of them from its predecessor buildings. Among them are the altar of the Renaissance church (1507), now kept in the chapter room; an ancient bust of Pope Pius V donated by Pope Pius XI in 1872; and various paintings of the 17th and 18th centuries by Piedmontese and Lombard artists. The painted decorations and the stucco work were executed in the mid-19th century. The presbytery and the main altar are decorated with large frescoes. The Chapel of Suffrage is a very fine example of the Rococo style of the 18th century, with an alabaster crucifix of the end of that century.
References:The Pilgrimage Church of Wies (Wieskirche) is an oval rococo church, designed in the late 1740s by Dominikus Zimmermann. It is located in the foothills of the Alps in the municipality of Steingaden.
The sanctuary of Wies is a pilgrimage church extraordinarily well-preserved in the beautiful setting of an Alpine valley, and is a perfect masterpiece of Rococo art and creative genius, as well as an exceptional testimony to a civilization that has disappeared.
The hamlet of Wies, in 1738, is said to have been the setting of a miracle in which tears were seen on a simple wooden figure of Christ mounted on a column that was no longer venerated by the Premonstratensian monks of the Abbey. A wooden chapel constructed in the fields housed the miraculous statue for some time. However, pilgrims from Germany, Austria, Bohemia, and even Italy became so numerous that the Abbot of the Premonstratensians of Steingaden decided to construct a splendid sanctuary.