Chiesa di Sant'Andrea, Bra

Because a town of twenty-nine thousand people has a parish church designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini and built under the guidance of Guarino Guarini, and the townspeople paid for it partly in days of their own labour.

The first stone went down in September 1672 and building finished in 1687. Inside, the Altar of San Sebastiano — co-patron of Bra, commissioned by the town itself and made in 1760 by Giuseppe Antonio Barelli — carries a large oval of the Martyrdom of Sant'Andrea by Claudio Francesco Beaumont, painter to the Savoy court, which the record calls the finest piece of 18th-century painting in the city.

The friction: it is a working parish church, with no ticket and no published visiting hours.

The tactic: look for the bas-relief walled into the outside wall on Via Barbacana before you go in. It is medieval, and it is a survivor from the church this one replaced.

A town built this, partly with its own hands. The record says the citizens contributed days of work as well as money. That is worth remembering in a building with no admission charge: the offertory box is the modern version of the same arrangement.

It is a parish church in use. Quiet, covered shoulders, nothing during a service, no flash on the Claudio Francesco Beaumont and Claret canvases.

The bas-relief is on a street wall. It is medieval, unprotected, and the only piece of the old parish church most visitors will ever see. Look, do not touch.

Via Fasola is residential. The surviving bell tower and retro-sacristy are among houses, not in a precinct.

Where. In the centre of Bra, province of Cuneo. Bra has 29,466 residents and stands at 285 metres.

Admission and hours. It is the working parish church of the town, in the archdiocese of Turin. No visiting hours and no admission charge are given for it in the record.

Getting in. Around a service is the dependable approach, as with any parish church.

See this even if the door is locked: the medieval bas-relief walled into the exterior on Via Barbacana, and — a street away, in Via Fasola — the 18th-century bell tower and retro-sacristy of the demolished medieval church.

How long. Twenty to thirty minutes inside, mostly in the Chapel of San Sebastiano, which holds the Claudio Francesco Beaumont oval, the Operti canvases of San Rocco and Santa Vittoria, and the 1760 altar.

Also in town: the two stylophore lions from the old church are in the Museo Civico.

No visiting hours are published, so the question is circumstance rather than hour — and around a service is the answer.

30 November is Sant'Andrea, the parish's own feast; 20 January is the Feast of San Sebastiano, co-patron of Bra, whose altar is the best thing in the building.

The exterior works at any time. The bas-relief on Via Barbacana is on an outside wall and the old bell tower in Via Fasola is a street view — neither needs an open door.

September brings the Madonna dei Fiori's patronal feast on the 8th at the sanctuary across town, and in alternate years Bra fills for its cheese festival.

Winter is cold inside a large unheated Baroque church, and the Piedmont fog reaches the plain Bra sits on.