The basilica of St John Bosco stands on Colle Don Bosco, in Morialdo, a hamlet of Castelnuovo Don Bosco, in the province of Asti. It was built where the Biglione farmstead stood, where Don Bosco's father, Francis, worked as a sharecropper. The Bosco family lived on the farmstead: it was here that John Bosco was born on 16 August 1815. His father Francis unfortunately died when John was not yet two years old; his mother Margaret (aged 29) then moved, with her three children and infirm mother-in-law, to a shed purchased by the father a few months before his death and which he renovated as a dwelling - the little house at the Becchi, also a place of pilgrimage from all over the world, where Don Bosco lived from the age of two to 16.
The Basilica consists of two churches and was built between 1961 and 1966. The foundation stone was blessed on 11 June 1961 and in 1965 only the lower church was opened for worship, with a capacity of 700 seats - a capacity that is roughly the same on the upper floor as well.
The 26-metre high building was constructed in classical forms, interpreted according to contemporary models. Two bell towers emerge from the façade, which together with the cupola and the grand staircase in front, characterise the exterior of the basilica. In front of the church is a large square used to accommodate large crowds of the faithful during pilgrimages.
The interior is influenced by the artistic tendencies of the time of construction, and consists of two floors. Marble predominates on the lower floor, wood on the upper floor.
The lower floor constitutes the crypt of the basilica: it is in the shape of a Latin cross with three naves delimited by two series of pillars. The aisles have a series of side altars. On the right of the transept is the chapel of St Francis de Sales, patron of the Salesian Congregation; on the left of the transept is a pipe organ. The apse wall of sanctuary wall is dominated by a painting by Mario Caffaro Rore, depicting the autumn walks that Don Bosco took with his boys from Turin to the Becchi, so much so that in the painting the artist very well highlights the two banners of the Eucharist and Mary, which are really the thrust of a spiritual life, but also of a serene, humanly dignified and beautiful life that the boys lived.
The stained glass windows highlight some figures of sacred history, but also of holiness to whom Don Bosco was particularly attached and whom he recalled as models or examples to his youngsters of educational love.
In the crypt of the basilica are distinguished relics of St John Bosco (a portion of his brain, stolen and later found in the summer of 2017) and St Dominic Savio (a bone). Don Bosco's relic is located in a sacellum behind the apsidal wall, Dominic Savio's in a casket with a simulacrum of his body in front of the saint's altar, on the left looking at the presbytery.
The Upper Basilica was consecrated in 1984 by Cardinal Anastasio Alberto Ballestrero, Archbishop of Turin at the time, and was renovated, with the installation of heating, improved acoustics and a more unified redefinition of the interior architectural lines in 1999. At the top of the steps, the bronze statue of Don Bosco, a gift from the teachers of Italy on the occasion of his Beatification in 1929, is by Bellini. Above the entrance portals, a fresco by Mario Bogani depicts Salesian missionary work in the various civilisations of the world. The interior, designed by the Trucco studio of Turin, was clad with beech wood panels and laminated beam ribs and closed by a suspended counter dome.
The back wall is dominated on the inside by the large statue of the risen Christ - 8 metres high by 6 metres wide, the work of the Demetz studio of Ortisei - which recalls precisely the centrality of Don Bosco's mission in educating to the spiritual life, to the Christian life, which is the encounter with Jesus. The paintings in turn refer to Don Bosco's mission and apostolic charisma starting from the great and mysterious dream he had when he was nine years old, and then gradually in the various paintings the realisation of this dream appears until it reached the whole world, the missions. The entire floor recalls the idea of a great ark: Noah's ark served as a defence against the storms of the Flood, in the storms of life Don Bosco showed the boys the anchor, salvation is in the encounter with Jesus.
On the upper floor one can also admire fourteen wooden panels representing as many paintings of the Via Lucis, and on the left side of the nave, a large Pinchi pipe organ opus 419 built in the year 2000, consisting of three mechanical manuals and pedal board with 48 registers.
For anyone who enters, a visit to the Basilica of Don Bosco in Castelnuovo Don Bosco means going to rediscover the origins of the extraordinary personality of Don Bosco and his work spread throughout the world.
