The new city was to be made up of the inhabitants of the villages of Quargnento, Solero, Oviglio, Foro, Bergoglio, Rovereto, Marengo and Gamondio.

[4] They set aside three jugera ("moggi") of land at the junction of the Quartiere di Marengo and the Quartiere di Gamondo, thanks to the generosity of the Marchesi del Bosco, for the construction of a "Chiesa maggiore" under the title of S. Pietro, who had been declared their patron saint two years earlier.

[13] On 28 May 1176, the Lombard League, of which Alessandria was a member, and of which Pope Alexander III was the nominal head, defeated Frederick Barbarossa in the Battle of Legnano, ending the emperor's fifth and last attempt to subdue the cities of Lombardy and Piedmont.

[26] The diocese was suppressed in 1213 by Pope Innocent III, due to the support of the Alessandrians for Emperor Otto IV.

[27] The Church of Alessandria had also been refusing to pay the annual tax due to the Roman see, according to a letter of Innocent III of 4 June 1214.

[28] It was restored on 10 May 1240 by Pope Gregory IX, with the bull "Regina Mater", as part of his strategy to defeat Frederick II.

[29] In 1334, the diocese of Alessandria was subjected to an official Visitation by the Vicar General of Archbishop Aicardus of Milan, Canon Eusebius de Tronzano of Vercelli.

[31] In 1287, the archdeacon of Alessandria, Ascherius, attended the provincial synod of Milan, held by Archbishop Otto.

[43] One of the policies of the Franch government was the reduction in the number of dioceses both in metropolitan France and in its annexed territories.

[44] In the bull "Gravissimis Causis" of 1 June 1803, Pope Pius VII authorized the papal legate to First Consul Bonaparte, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Caprara, to suppress a number of dioceses in the ecclesiastical province of Piedmont.

First Consul Bonaparte had remarked to General Louis-Alexandre Berthier, With Alessandria in my possession I should always be master of Italy.

Should insurrection take place, should Austria send a formidable force here, the French troops might retire to Alessandria, and stand a six months' siege.

[47] The medieval cathedral was closed on 6 January 1803 (17 Nivoise XI), and destroyed, on instructions issued in November 1802, to make way for the "Piazza della Libertà".

[50] The diocese of Alessandria was re-established as an independent ecclesiastical entity by Pope Pius VII on 17 July 1817, as a suffragan of the newly created metropolitan archdiocese of Vercelli.