Cappella dei Mercanti, Baroque chapel in central Turin, Italy
Cappella dei Mercanti is a rectangular baroque hall on Via Garibaldi, built from the late 1600s and inaugurated in 1692. Its walls carry paintings of the Magi by Sebastiano Taricco, Andrea Pozzo and Stefano Maria Legnani, alternating with marbled wooden statues of popes and Church Fathers carved by Carlo Giuseppe Plura between 1707 and 1715. Legnanino frescoed the vault with Paradise, prophets and sibyls in 1694-1695.
The chapel was built in the late 1600s for the Pious Congregation of Bankers, Merchants and Traders established in 1663. It reflects the growing wealth and influence of these professional groups in the city.
The chapel's decoration follows the Epiphany, the feast the Congregation celebrated there: the walls show the Magi before Herod, the star, the massacre of the Innocents and the procession into Jerusalem. The paintings are framed by marbled wooden statues of popes and Church Fathers carved by Carlo Giuseppe Plura between 1707 and 1715.
The chapel reopened to the public on 21 January 2017 after restoration, so it is not limited to weekend services. It stands at Via Garibaldi 25 in Turin's historic centre, next to the 16th-century Church of the Saints Martyrs. Its good acoustics make it a venue for classical music concerts, so a visit may coincide with a performance.
The sacristy holds Giovanni Plana's Perpetual Calendar, a mechanical device with rotating cylinders and gears designed to calculate dates across thousands of years. This intricate mechanism reveals the technical skill applied to religious spaces during that era.
The community of curious travelers
AroundUs brings together thousands of curated places, local tips, and hidden gems, enriched daily by 94,124 contributors worldwide.
