The church of Santa Maria Assunta, known as «in Piazza», in Fondi, was built at the wish of Onorato II Caetani d'Aragona, count of Fondi, on an older church recorded as early as 1126. Work began in 1487, and an inscription to the left of the main entrance says that in 1490 the building was finished; the finishing and the furnishings went on in the following years. The consecration came only on 30 April 1508, by Bishop Nicola Pellegrino: in the meantime the count had died, in 1491, and his grandson and heir Onorato III had lost the county in 1497, when it was assigned to Prospero Colonna. The bombing of the Second World War caused it considerable damage.
What to see
The forecourt is reached by a flight of nine basalt steps. The Renaissance façade, stepped in profile, is of stone blocks, with the rose window in peperino and three marble doorways, one for each aisle. The architrave of the main doorway, attributed to Tommaso Malvito, has a bas-relief with five cherubs, and the jambs bear the arms of the Caetani d'Aragona. To the left of the façade stands the bell tower, with a pyramid spire and, towards the square, a Romanesque single-light window and two pointed two-light windows with twisted colonnettes.
The interior is a Latin cross, with a nave and two aisles divided by pointed arches in peperino. At the end of the nave are two twin marble pulpits, attributed to Malvito's workshop. In the transept, the chapel on the left keeps the polychrome marble tabernacle commissioned by the count; the one on the right, built in 1613, has the wooden statue of the Madonna del Cielo between two angels, made in 1611 by the Neapolitan Aniello Stellato on behalf of the town. In the apse is the large altarpiece of the Death and Assumption of the Virgin, of 1534, attributed to the workshop of Giovanni Filippo Criscuolo. There are also the polyptych of the Trinity by Gabriele da Feltre, dated 1569, a Pietà and a triptych of the Nativity by Giovanni da Gaeta, a Madonna of the Rosary by Sebastiano Conca and the surviving stalls of the fifteenth-century wooden choir.
Visiting
Opening and Mass times should be checked with the parish.
Our editors' tip
Before going in, look up at the lunette of the main doorway: beside the enthroned Madonna and Child and St Catherine of Alexandria is Count Onorato II himself, kneeling in prayer in his count's robe. He is the man who wanted the church and did not see it consecrated.
