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San Salvatore

The church of San Salvatore is in Spoleto (Perugia) and represents a major architectural remains of the Lombard Langobardia Minor. The inspiration of the Lombard dukes of Spoleto monumental manifested here in the reconstruction of the church in the eighth century.

The whole site is part of the serial "Lombards in Italy: the places of power", including seven places full of architectural, sculptural and pictorial art Lombard, inscribed on UNESCO's World Heritage List in June 2011.

Situated on the left side of the street at the end of the cemetery, and a short distance from the complex of St. Pontian, is still, in spite of the tampering and modifications made over the centuries, one of the most important and rare examples of early Christian architecture. The Church, the "greatest monument of ancient Spoleto," as he called it a century ago, scholar and archaeologist Giuseppe Sordini, despite the recent restoration work is still excluded from the traditional tourist routes and neglected by them Spoleto, condemned to a sort of exile "on account of their cemetery, and still voted for an unjustified neglect.
The timing of the construction of the basilica, there are no documents in the event Datin unequivocally, must be estimated by direct examination of the building. Generally occurred three different orientations:
- Origin of the early Christian IV and V century (most reliable hypothesis).
- Source medieval between the eighth and ninth centuries.
- Sources connected to the Roman artistic flowering that occurred in Spoleto between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
The purity and classic architectural lines, especially the facade of the sanctuary but also, as residual, the presence of clear elements of eastern origin, the evident result of the large colony of Syrian monks present at Spoleto in the early centuries of Christianity, also suggest for the hypothesis of the early Christian basilica. It is also comforted in this opinion the foremost scholar of the history of Spoleto, Professor Bruno Toscano. Over the years the church has undergone restoration work, particularly in 1906, 1919-21, 1938, 1950 and 2000 in order to free her from the alterations made over the centuries.
The facade still retains the three-door and three windows, despite having lost its primary partition.
The three doors of the church have reached us in fragmentary condition, and of these only the central one, beautifully decorated, has retained its functional use, the other sides appeared before the last restoration, even if it is possible to distinguish the elements .
Over the last restoration work, during the disassembly of the frieze of the architrave of the central door, probably in the sixth century carved with a pattern of flowers and spirals including the cross palmata stands, the back face showed the membership of the great monolith a Roman gravestone of the first century AD C.
The repeated presence of the cross seems almost to underline the place of Christianity, which owes so much to the pagan classical art in Rome.
It is likely that the lower part of the facade was originally covered with plaster and adorned by a portico and top coated with a rusticated stone.
At the top of the front three windows stand out.
Remarkable is the central one, consisting of a round arch framed by a fine ring, in which elements of the purest classical mate sixteen strange radial elements of which are unusual in the decorations of the time and that may be of eastern origin.
The side windows, however, are of the gable, but calling in the ornamentation and the beautiful central window size.
The prospectus of the basilica was divided into two orders from a horizontal frame, only partially preserved, from which four fluted pilasters topped with capitals and crowned by a frieze and triangular pediment.
The interior of the basilica with three naves, divided by drums of Doric columns and pilasters in seven camps.
These were almost all buffered due to a restoration of the eighth century that perverts the original order of the aisles, now ideally be reconstructed through the surviving fragments: a sequence of Doric columns, possibly naked, subjected to an entablature and ended up in a frame, on which were placed a series of Ionic pilasters enclosing boxes similar to fake galleries, and the raising of the nave was divided into large arched windows, ornate ring.
The original structure is still visible in the sanctuary where they are associated with a Doric entablature, tall Corinthian columns, perhaps also of bare, supporting a dome.
The main aisle, on which there are large windows, round ends with an apse flanked by two side square.
In the absidiola on left aisle depicts God the Father Blessing, in the lunette, and between St. Paul and St. Mary?, A work of a painter gozzolesco very emaciated.
In the apse at the center of the curved wall, in an arch exceeded there is a jeweled cross, the rest of the decoration attached to the remake of the eighth century.
In the apse at the center of the curved wall, in an arch exceeded there is a jeweled cross, the rest of the decoration attached to the remake of the eighth century.
In the floor of the apse is a remnant of plants alexandrinum opus, perhaps belonging to a renewed litostrato in the Romanesque period.
In the absidiola decorative paintings of the same right hand that left the Eternal Father blessing are depicted in the lunette of the Madonna and St. Concordio and San Sebastian, a work dated 1478.