The church of Sant'Antonio Vecchio is a small Romanesque church on corso Armando Diaz, in the heart of Borgo Ravaldino, in Forlì.
What to see
It was built in the early years of the 12th century at the wish of the abbot of the Vallombrosan monastery of Fiumana, as a parish. In 1798 the parish priest left the church and moved the parish seat to the nearby church of Sant'Anna dei Carmelitani Scalzi, today Sant'Antonio Abate, and from then on the decay was very rapid: it became a fodder store, then a stable for cavalry units, in the second half of the 19th century a dance hall called «La Gran Bretagna», during the First World War a barracks for convalescent soldiers and finally a grocer's shop divided into two floors. Of its Romanesque layout it keeps the brick façade with a mullioned window and the remains of two frescoes: the lower one in Giotto style and the upper one, from the early 13th century, with a Charity by an unknown master.
Its recovery began in the 1930s and continued in the 1950s with the architect Luigi Corsini, when the church was made the Sacrario dei Caduti forlivesi: the building attached to it was demolished and the elegant central mullioned window, the brick decoration of the façade and the remains of the two frescoes came back to light. In 1956 an exhibition devoted to the First World War was set up there, and inside two large plaques were inaugurated on 4 November 1962 and 4 November 1968. In the apse are The Apotheosis of the Hero by Piero Angelini and Il Bersagliere di Tychovskoy by Enzo Pasqui, oil on masonite of 1969. The frescoes that decorated the façade, with the Madonna and Child and Saint Anthony Abbot blessing a boy, detached in 1997, can be seen at the Musei di San Domenico; in 2009, after a new restoration, the church became a multipurpose hall.
Visiting
The church is on corso Armando Diaz, in Borgo Ravaldino; as it is now a multipurpose hall, hours and access should be checked with the parish or the Comune before visiting.
Our editors' tip
Stop in front of the façade: the central mullioned window, the brick decoration and the two superimposed frescoes, Giottesque below and 13th-century above, tell in a few metres the story of a building saved after centuries of improper uses.
