The church of Santa Maria ad Nives is a place of worship in Faenza, on piazza Santa Maria Foris Portam. It stood outside the Manfredi walls, which enclosed it after 1450, and was called Santa Maria Foris Portam; it was also called Santa Maria Vecchia, to distinguish it from the «New» one, the church of Santa Maria dell'Angelo.
What to see
The first sources are from Maestro Tolosano, who died in 1226, according to whom the church was the cathedral of the diocese of Faenza, moved here from the town's pieve of San Pietro after a massacre carried out by the Lombard king Liutprand in 740 during the Holy Saturday service; other sources speak instead of a fire that destroyed the pieve of San Pietro intra moenia, and archaeological excavations at the end of the twentieth century have supported this. From 740 Benedictine monks from Santa Maria in Afri, at Tredozio, settled here, and a frescoed image of the Virgin, which according to tradition had been painted by an angel, was venerated. In 1168 the church passed to the monks of Fonte Avellana and in 1515 to the Cistercians, who stayed until 1778, when they moved to Santa Maria Nuova taking with them the remains of Saint Peter Damian, the furnishings and the picture of the Madonna.
Originally the church was oriented like the Paleochristian ones, with the apse to the east. From that period remain the upper part of the flanks, with blind arcades around the large windows typical of the Ravenna basilicas, and two inner columns of African breccia with finely carved marble capitals, on either side of the entrance: according to a devotional tradition, touching them with hands and head brings the protection of Saint Peter Damian. The present interior was built in 1655 by Bartolomeo Sauli, who reversed the orientation, greatly enlarged the space and created a new entrance with a portico where the apse had been. The octagonal bell tower, with a cylindrical core and a ramp between the two structures, was built between the ninth and tenth centuries; the cross on top is 40 metres from the ground. In 1944, during the war, it was a target of British artillery and practically destroyed; in the reconstruction it was returned to its hypothetical original form, with a flat roof.
Visiting
The church is on piazza Santa Maria Foris Portam, in Faenza. The sources consulted give no opening hours or visiting arrangements: check them.
Our editors' tip
In 2018 the church received a new set of five bells, cast by the Allanconi foundry of Ripalta Cremasca and mounted «in the Bolognese way», entirely manual: they can be rung as two distinct sets, and are regularly rung «a doppio» by the local bell-ringers.
