Castelvecchio

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Category: Paesi

The village is today very different from what must have appeared in the Middle Ages. Today only some ruins of the fortified village remain, hidden by vegetation.

Literature attest it as one of the most important and populous castles in the area (the town had about 100 families), surrounded by massive elliptical walls.

A place of passage, for its location along the path between Massa Martana, Todi and Gualdo Cattaneo, it had a hospital and seven churches under it (San Giorgio, Sant'Anastasia, Santa Cristina, San Biagio, Santa Croce, Santissima Trinità e Sant’Ippolito).

Castelvecchio's history is marked by several episodes, which made the town a scene of repeated fighting. In 1377 Catalano degli Atti head of the Guelph faction attacked the population of the Ghibelline party, who were able to protect themselves thanks to good defense that the mighty walls opposed.

In 1434 the castle was totally destroyed by the troops of Francesco Sforza. The few survivors decided to reconstruct the village further down the valley, around an important crossroads where in 1603 was built the Sanctuary of the Madonna di Castelvecchio.

The building still dominates the town, showing late Renaissance lines that little integrate with the architecture and atmosphere of medieval castles in the area.

The sanctuary was built in 1604 by the Bishop of Todi Angelo Cesi and was designed by the architect from Perugia Valentino Martelli. The church was built to commemorate a miraculous event occurred May 11, 1602. The simple lines of the structure hide a rich interior of seventeenth-century works of art, in addition to the fresco on the main altar, with the miraculous image of the Madonna con Bambino, painted in 1581 by Pietro Paolo Sensini.

On the four side altars there are fine seventeenth-century paintings: Cristo crocifisso tra San Francesco e Santa Maria Maddalena, by Ascensidonio Spacca called il Fantino, San Carlo Borromeo by Pietro Paolo Sensini and Madonna di Costantinopoli e la Santissima Concezione tra i Santi Francesco, Domenico e Antonio da Padova by Pietro Salvi da Bevagna.  Just outside the town is the pretty little church of St. Ippolito, documented since the 13th century, of an elegant Romanesque style with a semicircular apse of unusual shape and masonry in white and pink stone. The interior has a single nave and the apse preserves a seventeenth century fresco depicting “Cristo in Croce tra San Pietro e San Paolo”.

Sinkhole of Castelvecchio

Dolina is a word of Slovenian origin and simply means valley. Given that the interest in the karst phenomena developed from the Slovenian territories, international terminology has designed that term to define more precisely a karst valley, which is a typical depression of the land molded into various shapes by karst phenomena. A dolina (sinkhole) is a closed basin that would fill with water giving rise to a pond if the walls and floor were waterproof, however, usually the water is absorbed through underground tunnels. Formed by the erosive action of rainwater, the sinkhole has an elliptical form and measures 250-300 m in diameter and is about 20 m deep.

Ammonites

The Ammonites, Phylum: Mollusca - Class: Cephalopoda - Subclass: Ammonoidea, are cephalopods appeared in the Devonian (about 400 million years ago) and extinct around the Upper Cretaceous-Paleocene (ca. 65 million years ago). Ammonites were animals of marine origin whose shell was formed by calcium carbonate in the form of aragonite, while the organic part was substantially composed by conchiolina. Ammonites were classified as cephalopods and can be considered as the progenitors of today's squid and cuttlefish. The anatomical parts that you can recognize and observe in fossils of ammonites are mainly: the fragmocon and protoconch, the Chamber of Housing and the peristome.

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