ASTI, DIocese of. – A city in Piedmont, situated on the hills south of the Tanaro River, at the confluence of the Borboore with the Versa. An important agricultural and wine-producing center, it is the capital of a recently created province (1,510 sq. km). The diocese, since 1817 a suffragan of Turin, has 162,000 inhabitants, nearly all Catholic, and comprises 120 parishes, 235 diocesan priests, and 35 regular clergy (1948).
It was a Roman colony and municipality (Asta or Hasta), mentioned by Pliny. After the fall of the empire it was occupied by the Goths and Burgundians, devastated by Alaric and Alboin, and revived under the Lombards, who made it an important duchy, later transformed by Charlemagne into a county. Around 1100 it became a commune. Internal factions and conflicts with neighboring cities such as Pollenza, Alba, Alessandria, and with the marquises of Montferrat and Saluzzo forced it to endure alternating periods of freedom and subjection to the House of Savoy, the Angevins, the Paleologi, and the Visconti. In 1378 Asti was given as a dowry by Gian Galeazzo Visconti to his daughter Valentina, wife of the Duke of Orléans; it remained under the dominion of this house until the Peace of Cambrai (1529), when Charles V ceded it to Beatrice of Portugal, wife of Charles III of