Description
The Church of the Madonna di Costantinopoli was built in the 16th and 17th centuries; a Franciscan convent was annexed to it, which, together with a large park, creates a place of peace and beauty. In the century it has become the private property of a noble family of Spoleto.
Previous to 1600, about a mile from the current church, was an image of the Madonna considered miraculous, painted on a piece of wall set into four oak beams, currently placed on the high altar of the church. Around the image, in a simple shrine along the road, using the gifts and donations of the devoted, a “hut” was first built which served as a stop-off point for travellers.
The official historiography wants that the first stone to construct the convent was laid in 1690 by the Franciscan order, on the foundations of an earlier church. To this day no written testimony has been found on what these places represented before this date, even if it appears evident from a number of architectonic elements and a few structural details that a place of worship and devotion connected to the image of the Virgin of Constantinople had already existed. Some testimonies date a first church to the early Middle Ages (9th-10th centuries).
The Church, of simple architecture, fronted by a portico canopy, is richly embellished by altars made in wood and in stucco with the relevant canvases of the 17th century and still, in part, preserves the furnishings of the most typical Franciscan style.