SS Bernando and Grace chapel

The first indication of a locality of Pianezza called San Bernardo appears in the municipal register drawn up in the years 1554-1560. In this region seventeen owners register their lands intensively cultivated with vines; there are also properties of the Sant'Antonio Hospital in Ranverso, one of a brotherhood of Pianezza, that of Baratonia and one of the nuns of Brione. The existence of the church is remembered only one century later, in 1660, in the report of the pastoral visit, as a building open on the facade protected by a “rastello”, that is, a wood gate made of vertical bar. Just on that occasion, the chilly chaotic state forced the archbishop to ban the building to worship.
The indication of the region by the name of a saint refers to a very old custom and to the possible existence of an antecedent worship building, perhaps related to the presence of cultivating servants of the adjacent Cortassa, a farm perhaps of the bishop's castle or some monastery .
The construction of the little church, as could be inferred from the wall fabric, the constructive system, and its dimensions, could be located roughly in the second half of the 1400s, with a shape nearly like the chapel of San Sebastiano, the oldest part of Madonna della Stella and other ancient chapels in the surrounding area. It was certainly restored, fifty years later, in the agreement that closed the long quarrel between the common and parish priest on the union of the two parishes, it was decided that the solemn feast of St. Bernard and Saint Grate was celebrated in the chapel.
The angular pillars, the facade, the vault and the front porch, the fresco of the Madonna and Child and the two saints above the altar were the most notable interventions promoted by the two rectors, each year being elected among the owners of the surrounding vineyards. The rogation procession was directed to the church to invoke the prosperity of the countryside.
In 1841 a new degradation was found but during the subsequent restoration and embellishment interventions it was then planned to insert three reliefs in terracotta, by Giovanni Calvetti, depicting "L'Annunciazione" and "La Fuga in Egitto", places at the center and sides of the altar to replace the fresco. An inscription would remind you of the remedy that eradicated the crittogama (a parasitic fungus of gray-like appearance sticking on the leaves and grapes of the vine) that had devastated the vineyards from 1850 to 1857.
They continued to celebrate until the end of the world conflict, then abandonment accelerated the end of a structure that had been overwhelmed. The roof fell out, the vault fell, the facade and the walls shattered to dangerous ruins.
As a result of the impossibility of recovery, the Alpinians took on the burden of a reconstruction that preserved the memory of the old building, on 25 March 2000 they laid the foundations for the new and existing church. Inside there is a series of wall paintings with bucolic scenes by the artist Guglielmo Meltzeid.