DUOMO DI SANTA MARIA MAGGIORE

Built in the thirteenth century, in the course of eighteenth century the church experienced a drastic renovation which gave it its present structure consisting of three buildings: the frontispiece, made up of the belfry and an entrance hall; the former main hall, which nowadays is the crypt, and the Chapel dedicated once to the Holy Mary of the Recovery, and today to Saint Rock. The stone façade is noteworthy for its central structure resembling a tower, which functions both as an entrance hall and as a campanile. In the course of the thirteenth century it was modified with the addition of another storey. The pointed and splayed portal supported by bundles of columns is really notable. A niche with a statue of Saint John the Baptiste surmounted by the clock was added on one side in the sixteenth century. The columnated porch is dated to the fourteenth century even though it was enlarged in 1882. Below it there are a magnificent Renaissance portal and a fresco depicting Saint Christopher, painted in1443 by Andrea Delitio. The eighteenth-century church above the crypt consists of a single nave surrounded at the top by a continuous cornice, supported by pillars fitted in the walls. Inside it is possible to see significant examples of local art: seventeenth-century canvases, a wooden pulpit, the carved and painted stone frontal and a sixteenth-century wooden tabernacle.