Church of the Immacolata Concezione, Chieri

The Church of the Immacolata Concezione, also called San Fillippo, is a Roman Catholic temple, built adjacent to a former Oratorian seminary and convent, located on Via Vittorio Emenuele II number 61 in the town of Chieri, Province of Turin, region of Piedmont, Italy. The Seminary is now a museum called Centro Visite Don Bosco.

History

The church was initiated in the 17th-century and not finalized for decades. The architects are unknown; the style is that of Baroque architecture. The interior has main altarpiece by Daniel Seyter. The sacristy has a large canvas by Caraccioli. The main relic of the church are those of St Valentine, represented by a wooden sculpture. In the presbytery is the tomb of Giovanni Comollo, a close friend of San Giovanni Bosco. The adjacent convent-seminary was begun in the 17th-century for the Oratorians of San Filippo Neri; the architect was Pietro Angelo Galletti. The building became city hall from 1821 to 1949, when it was given to the Seminary of Turin.^[1]

In 2011, a museum, Centro Visite Don Bosco, has exhibits about the life and work of the founder of the Salesian Order, Saint Giovanni Bosco, who studied in this seminary for nearly half a decade starting in 1835.^[2]

References