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...of citizens dressed as their fourteenth-century ancestors, before the frenetic bare-backed horse race around the arena of the Campo del Palio - followed by the awarding of the palio (banner) to the winner and all-night feasting and boozing. The rest of the year the Campo del Palio is a vast, bleak car park, and there's frankly not a lot to see. The arcaded Piazza Alfieri is officially the centre of town, behind which the Collegiata di San Secondo (Mon-Sat 10.45am-noon & 3.30-5.30pm, Sun 3.30-5.30pm) is dedicated to the city's patron saint, built on the site of the saint's martyrdom in the second century. There's nothing left of the second-century church but there is a fine sixth-century crypt, its columns so slender that they seem on the verge of toppling over. As for the rest of the church, it's a slick, early-Gothic construction, with neat red-brick columns topped with tidily carved capitals and in the left aisle a polyptych by one of Asti's Renaissance artists, Gandolfino d'Asti. The Palio banners are also kept here, housed in a heavily ornate Baroque chapel, along with the Carroccio - a sacred war chariot used in medieval times.

The main street, Corso Alfieri, slices through the town from the Piazza Alfieri, to the east of which the church of San Pietro at Corso Alfieri 2 (Tues-Fri 9am-1pm & 3-5pm, Sat 10am-1pm & 3-6pm, Sun 10am-1pm) has a circular twelfth-century Baptistry, now used as an exhibition space, and a museum, housed in what was a pilgrim's hospice, displaying an odd - and badly labelled - assortment of Roman and Egyptian artefacts. At the other end of the Corso, the Torre Rossa is a medieval tower with a chequered top, built on the foundations of the Roman tower in which San Secondo, a Roman soldier, was imprisoned before being killed.

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