There are a few nice votive pictures in the church, and one or two
very early frescoes, which are not without interest; but the main
charm of the place is in the architecture, and the sense at once of
age and strength which it produces. The stock things to see are
the vaults in which many of the members of the royal house of
Savoy, legitimate and illegitimate, lie buried; they need not,
however, be seen.
I have said that the whole building is of much about the same date,
and, unless perhaps in the residential parts, about which I can say
little, has not been altered. This is not the view taken by the
author of Murray's Handbook for North Italy, who says that
"injudicious repairs have marred the effect of the building;" but
this writer has fallen into several errors. He talks, for example,
of the "open Lombard gallery of small circular arches" as being
"one of the oldest and most curious features of the building,"
whereas it is obviously no older than the rest of the church, nor
than the keep-like construction upon which it rests. Again, he is
clearly in error when he says that the "extremely beautiful
circular arch by which we pass from the staircase to the corridor
leading to the church, is a vestige of the original building." The
double round arched portals through which we pass from the main
staircase to the corridor are of exactly the same date as the
staircase itself, and as the rest of the church.
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