Novalesa

Up to the construction of the present road to the crossing, commissioned by Napoleon Bonaparte, the village of Novalesa constitutes the point of arrival of the road that came from Turin and it dipartiva the Royal Road, a mule track passable today that led to the Moncenisio. Along the ancient via Maestra, still today the heart of the Community, overlooked numerous hotels, inns and points of reference for the travellers who here lied.

Traces are visible not only in the traditional architecture of the houses which overlook along the central street of the village and the inside of the alleys and the courts but also by a considerable apparatus of frescoes which embellishes the facades. Next to the parish church is visible the frescoed cycle depicting the vices and the Virtues and the Infernal penis, work of the maestro Gioffrey 1714 returning iconographic models still late medieval. At walking distance you find the house of the frescoes (XIV century), an ancient hotel on whose external facade is placed a theory of coats of arms of the House of Savoy and the other European States of the time and the hotel where he lived even Napoleon Bonaparte, the Ecu de France / Epée Royale with the wide staircase with a balustrade in wood. At the end of via Maestra the chapel of San Sebastiano (XVII century) houses in its interior the artistic crib permanent Novalesa.

The parish church of Santo Stefano (XIII century), rebuilt in 1684, conserves numerous testimonies of art that make it one of the most significant monuments ecclesiastics of Valle di Susa. The Parish Church cherishes outstanding works of art, among all the refined polyptych of the end of the Fifteenth century attributed to tolosano Anthoyne de Lhonye; and five paintings donated in 1805 by Napoleon Bonaparte to the Hospice of the Moncenisio and subsequently translated: The Deposition attributed to the workshop in Cremona by Giulio Campi; the Adoration of the Magi, copy of the school of Rubens; the Adoration of the shepherds by François Lemoyne (1721); the Crucifixion of Saint Peter, ancient copy of the original Caravaggio of 1601, and the Deposition of Christ from the cross, replication from an original by Dirck van Baburen, Martyrdom of Santo Stefano del cheraschese Sebastiano Taricco. In the area of the presbytery is preserved one of the articles the most ancient of the abbey of Novalesa, the urn containing the relics of S. Eldrado (XII century), a masterpiece of jewelry mosano-Rhine.

Next to the parish church, the chapel of the SS. The Sacrament (1597) hosts from 2002 the Museum of Religious Art Alpina, one of the seats of the Diocesano Museum System: are collected jewelry, textiles and paintings coming from the parish church and the chapels in the territory of Novalesa

The Abbey of SS Peter and Andrew (726 d.C.) is situated a few kilometers from the village of Novalesa and rises to the margins of the transit route for the Mont-Cenis pass. The path of the centuries it reads through the buildings of the monastery complex that show signs of events of constructive and decorative that have succeeded one another from the Middle Ages to the XIXTH C. Since 2009, with the opening of the Archeological Museum, the Abbey of Novalesa is currently one of the monastic complexes in Europe which are better known the material structures within which took place during the centuries the spiritual experience of the Community.