Last minute Itinerari San Gemini

The town San Gemini

The medieval aspect of San Gemini is well preserved, and the urban fabric faithfully refelcts the nature of an ancient suburb, sets on a high ground and surrounded by the boundaries, of which the layout and numerous rests are visible. The main entrance doors of the city are four, but the one that it directly introduces to the city centre is Porta Romana, built in the XVIII century.

One of the buildings of greater merit that can be visited in San Gemini is certainly the St. Francis Church. Built in the XIII century in honour of the cult linked to the figure of St. Francis; who visited the city several times. The style is Gothic, with a richly painted single aisle. Of particular interest is The Crucifixion created in the XIV century by an artist belonging to the pictorial movement known as Umbrian School. It's important also to visit the cloister, a refined and elegant place, which prepares shows and various displays every year.

It's very suggestive also the small Santo Stefano Church, or at least what remains of it: the apse, the nucleus around which the city of San Gemini is developed. Near the church have come to the light precious finds of the Roman world. These are a building, of which remains the impluvium and the environments that surround it, but also two marvellous floors covered by mosaics of the I century. One is covered by floral drawings and flights of birds, while the other one has geometric forms.

The Convent of Santa Maria Maddalena is datable around the XI century, even if has suffered various following interventions, among which particularly incisive were those of the 1700. The Church of San Giovanni Battista instead is dated XII century, perhaps risen on a precedent building of the IV century.

Palazzo Zanasi, located on the side of the perimeter to the Palazzo Pretorio; it is an elegant building of the XVIII century. Palazzo Pretorio goes back to the XII century, a building that was centre of the government of San Gemini. A splendid medieval construction, known also with the names of Palazzo del Popolo or Palazzo Vecchio, it is externally decorated with a series of noble coats of arms, while the inside rooms show the native paintings, among which there's a representation of the Buon Governo. Beside the building rises the Torre Esperia, within the tower is the Campana delle Adunanze, cast by Matteo di Orvieto in 1318.

In San Gemini there's also the summer residence of the famous sculptor Antonio Canova an imposing building risen with its tower above the piazza St. Francis.

Outside boundaries encircling the inhabited area, there's one of the most ancient monastic Umbrian structures, already mentioned in some documents of 1036, this is the Abbazia of San Nicolò. It reached quite soon a great influence extended at least up to the XV century. The construction of the façade is dated back to the XII century as the marvellous portal, today visible only in copy because the original one has been transferred to the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Numerous decorative elements, among which capitals, marbles and sculptures are archaeological of Roman and Romanesque origin materials, as for instance the image of a lion, represented in the action to stop a ram.