It’s a well know problem for people who live near famous or desirable tourist attractions: they never visit them.
I used to ride my motorcycle or even drive my car past this distinctive church innumerable times in a week. It’s on the edge of the city of Todi which is the nearest town to my village, a commercial and social hub. From my village 12 miles away it is a clear landmark on the horizon:
You come into town and there it is “the Consolazione” an old familiar blob by the side of the street.
They were closing when I arrived but she squeezed me and my camera in at the last minute. I guess I must have been in there before but honestly I can’t remember so my breath was quite taken away by the beauty inside the church.
In the old days the church was a bit of a head scratcher as no one knew who was responsible for creating it. I know it’s hard to imagine but the Papal States (which were dissolved only on September 20th 1870) were absolutely littered with these kinds of churches monuments and ruins and the Papal bureaucracy was much less efficient than the secret police. They just lost track of this stuff.
The authorities used to say the temple was “attributed to” Donato Bramante (1444 - 1514) a wildly successful Papal architect. You may have heard of the cathedral in Rome known as St Peter’s, he was commissioned to design that masterpiece to mark the place where St Peter was martyred. In a list of his buildings you probably won’t find the Consolazione. However nowadays there is the tourist trade to consider so his hand in the design of this church is now definite… in 1508. He was a busy man as St Peter’s was designed in 1503 and Michelangelo started work in 1506.
Apparently this is a Renaissance church built more as a square with a dime reminiscent of St Peter’s. But what it makes me think is how stuff there is lying around Italy, so much art and history that the origins of a building as particular as this can essentially get lost.
That and the fact that tourism has arrived in the backwater where I spect my childhood. Not only can you get pizza delivery nowadays…
…but back at home banal public buildings are now labeled as historic sites for the benefit of the passersby walking these villages to discover their heritage.
I wandered around a bit outside the church at Todi pondering the benefit of the internet which makes what was obscure well known suddenly.
And had I known all those years ago riding to band practice or coming to market, would this 21st century knowledge have made a difference? I’d like to think I’d have stopped and pondered things more and not taken these beauties for granted. But I was a callow youth and I had no Google!
