Loreto. The Basilica of the Holy House

2024

The Basilica of the Holy House is one of the main places of veneration of Mary and one of the most important and visited Marian shrines of the Catholic Church. It is located in Loreto.

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Offida. Collegiate Church of S. Maria Assunta

Collegiate Church. Built between 1785 and 1798 by the Ticino architect Pietro Maggi, who substituted and profoundly changed the design by Ascoli Lazzaro Giosafatti; it has a neoclassical Louis XVI interior and a facade built only at the end of the nineteenth century in an eclectic style of brick and travertine. Inside, among other things, there is a thirteenth-century wooden casket with 26 ivory figurines of northern art, a fourteenth-century processional cross, a fifteenth-century reliquary, a sixteenth-century wooden group, a wooden crucifix by Desiderio Bonfini (1612) , paintings of the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries (Crivellesque school and school of Pietro Alemanno). The choir carved with twisted columns and mirrors in Verona briar with two orders of 14 stalls was built by Alessio Donati for the church of Santa Maria della Rocca but was transferred in 1794 to the Collegiate, together with the relics of San Leonardo di Noblac preserved in a urn placed inside the main altar, also in wood. On 12 November 1994 the body of Blessed Corrado da Offida was placed in the third altar on the left, solemnly moved from Perugia, where it had been kept in the now no longer consecrated Church of San Francesco al Prato. The church, despite the distance, was affected by the strong earthquake that occurred in L'Aquila on 6 April 2009: in fact, on the day of the earthquake some pieces of plaster fell off the bell tower.

Ancona. La Cattedrale di San Ciriaco

The cathedral of Ancona is dedicated to San Ciriaco. It is a medieval church in which the Romanesque style blends with the Byzantine one, evident in the plan and in many decorations

Recanati. Views

Recanati is an Italian town of 20 975 inhabitants in the province of Macerata in the Marche region.

Montefortino. The sanctuary of the Madonna dell'Ambro

The sanctuary of the Madonna dell'Ambro is a religious building of Marian worship, located in the municipality of Montefortino, in the Sibillini Mountains.

Loreto. The Basilica of the Holy House

The Basilica of the Holy House is one of the main places of veneration of Mary and one of the most important and visited Marian shrines of the Catholic Church. It is located in Loreto.

Offida, Ascoli Piceno. Church of S. Maria della Rocca

The church is located on the western edge of the town, surrounded on three sides by cliffs that open onto two valleys. It is a Romanesque-Gothic brick construction, built by Maestro Albertino in 1330 on a pre-existing small Benedictine church. The façade, facing the outside of the town, is articulated by pilasters and on the opposite side there are three high polygonal apses with white stone pilasters, single lancet windows and Gothic arches. On the central apse there is a Romanesque-Gothic portal that leads into the crypt (3 then 5 naves), as wide as the upper church and decorated with frescoes attributed to the Master of Offida. The upper church, with a single hall according to the tradition of the mendicant orders, preserves frescoes of Giotto influence, still attributed to the Master of Offida (those of the transept are dated by an inscription to 1367) and others attributed to Giacomo da Campli (15th century) . Part of the original decorations were also lost due to the deterioration of the roof. In the side altars, erected in different eras, there is the one dedicated to Saint Andrew, from the 15th century, with an altarpiece frescoed on the wall by Vincenzo Pagani. During the advance of the allied troops, between 16 and 18 June 1944 some German soldiers had completely undermined the church so that the rubble was in the way of the allies, but none of the thirty mines exploded and the inhabitants attributed the episode to a miracle of the Virgin. On the left side of the first step of the staircase leading to the church a sheep is represented eating a four-leaf clover; popular belief has it that if you position yourself on it, walking backwards along the staircase, with your eyes closed, your wish will be fulfilled.

Ascoli Piceno. The Palazzo dei Capitani del Popolo

Overlooking Piazza del Popolo, it stands out for its elegant medieval crenellated tower next to the historic Meletti café. Built between the 13th and 14th centuries from the union of three small buildings separated by two rue, one of which was equipped with a tower which was later reused, it was remodeled following the fire that almost entirely destroyed the interior in 1535. The central portal, preceded by a staircase and surmounted by the monument to Paul III, the courtyard with three orders of loggias and the staircase, the latter built by Camillo Merli around 1550, date back to that period.

Ascoli Piceno. The Church of San Francesco

The church of San Francesco in Ascoli Piceno is considered one of the best Italian works of Franciscan architecture, as well as the most representative Franciscan religious building in the Marche region.

Rotella. Hermitage of San Francesco

In the territory of Poggio Canoso, along the road from Rotella to the Ascension mountain, there is an ancient convent, one of the first Franciscan hermitages built in the region. Tradition has it that it was San Francesco himself, perhaps bringing back everything that was already existing Benedictine, to choose the place that would host his convent and remain there for a night. The convent of Poggio Canoso was suppressed on 18 December 1653. After the uncertainties about its use, the convent finally received the attention it deserved and from 1989 to 2009 it was the seat of the "Meeting Community" of Don Pierino Gelmini. The boys, guests of the center, with precise and assiduous work, managed to restore the church, the cloister and all the ancient Franciscan structures to the splendors of the times of the conventual fathers.

Ascoli Piceno. The Church of San Francesco

This church is considered one of the best Italian works of Franciscan architecture, as well as the most representative Franciscan religious building in the Marche region. It was begun with the adjoining convent in 1258, consecrated in 1371 and completed with the dome in the 16th century. On the main facade, in Via del Trivio, there are three Gothic portals, while the right side acts as a scenic backdrop to the Piazza del Popolo and is characterized by the dynamic fifteenth-century apses, the fourteenth-century side portal surmounted by the monument to Julius II of 1510 and ends with an apsidal group of rare architectural model.

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