写真

St. Pontian

Outside the town walls of Spoleto, not far from the cemetery and the church of San Salvatore, along the road to Colle Ciciano, between woods and olive groves, stands the abbey of St. Pontian.

The church has a basilica with three naves and three apses presbytery slightly raised semicircular terminals. The nave was covered with vaults.
The facade of the twelfth century, is bounded by two pilasters with Corinthian capitals and meets the nave is divided into two orders with frames hanging arches. On the left are the tall bell tower, only to the original boundary on the second frame, while on the right side you see the profile of an aisle lower.

At the bottom opens the portal architrave cosmatesca box with a frame topped by an arch with carved decoration, in the middle you see a rose window, which remains only the outer frame with bas-reliefs depicting the four Evangelists and two small side light windows, front culminating in a massive pediment crowning also decorated with a frame of arches, probably built in the fourteenth century.

The interior of the church with eighteenth-century forms is due to the intervention made in 1788 designed by Valadier, who probably also drew up the altars, still retains the original architecture and decorations of great interest.

It has three naves, with a raised presbytery and a crypt below. The nave and chancel retain the eighteenth floor. The paintings of the side altars depicting St. Francis receiving the stigmata and the Immaculate Conception with Saints, while the high altar depicts the beheading of S. Pontian on the Bloody Bridge. The choir takes up the space of the sanctuary and keeps the skull of S. Pontian, in the days of the anniversary is carried in procession through the city. At the bottom of the right aisle there is also the urn contains the remains of the Blessed Marina Petrucciani, Spoleto nun died in 1501 in the Monastery of St. Matthew, in the concept of holiness.

From the bottom of the left aisle, you enter the crypt, which has preserved the original layout of the twelfth century and is divided into three short aisles with apses in the central terminals, wider than it is in turn divided into three aisles concluded by many apses, with coverage with vaulted ceilings supported by columns with capitals. The frescoes of the fourteenth and fifteenth century, including a St. Michael the Archangel and the Virgin and Child, and three ancient sarcophagi adds to the charm of the environment.

In the chapter hall of the monastery also houses a large fresco dated 1482 depicting the Virgin and Child with Saints Benedict and Pontian, patrons of Spoleto and Norcia.

Built on the site where tradition was martyred and buried the young Spoleto Pontian (175 AD), which subsequently became the patron saint of the city, we have news of the existence of a monastery dedicated to the martyr before the year one thousand. In the eleventh century was a thriving Benedictine monastery in 1392 and there was this woman a religious community that followed the rule of St. Benedict, in the sixteenth century Benedictine took over at the Poor Clares.

In 1860 the monastery became the property of the municipality of Spoleto in 1899 and was sold to private persons was later returned to the nuns in 1905 and is inhabited by the Lateran Canons Regular of St. Augustine.

In 1970, restored the facade and the crypt, the apse, are the remains of the original Romanesque church.