Saint Maria in Vescovio

Beautiful Sanctuary in a vast and peaceful valley with a completely frescoed medieval church, a small excavation in which one may admire remains of the ancient roman city of Forum Novum and the ruins of a convent situated on the summit of a hill: beautiful place for a stop with its grassland and trees.

Only a small part of the remains of the important roman city, a municipium, are visible on the left side of the sanctuary. But nonetheless different sources testify the importance it must have detained in the past. It had an important market, temples, and an acqueduct, and therefore also thermae and public baths.

A Christian community certainly existed as of the second half of the third century. It became an Episcopate (in modern Italian: Vescovado, and anciently Vescovio, reason for which it is so called)
Like many other chuches, in the VII to XII century, this sanctuary was built, destroyed, rebuilt, modified and enlargened, etc
The elegant romanic bell tower was probably built in the X-XI centuries. It is made mainly of lateritium and has squared stones at all corners.
The decline of the church began starting of half of the '500, when it was no longer and episcopate. Regardless of this, in this same period an important building, now completely in ruins, was constructed at the summit of the hill, supposedly to guest the devotees of the different orders that used to take care of the Sanctuary until half of the '700.
Internally the church was entirely decorated by a pictorial cycle that illustrates the old and the new testament and that is datable to the XIII century and attributed to one of the apprentices of Cavallini.
Unfortunately damaged and approximately only half of what it must have originally been, but nonetheless we are fortunate this much has been recuperated from under a layer of stucco, probably of the '800 and carefully restored in 1930.
In the walls one may admire different monuments, such as a beautiful Corinthian capital in the crypt.
During the holidays one may find different groups picnicking in the park in front of the church,

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