The church of Santa Maria Assunta is the mother church of Augusta, in piazza Duomo, with its front facing east. Today's building was rebuilt on the ruins of the church that collapsed in the earthquake of 1693; at the beginning of the eighteenth century it was the only parish in the town.
What to see
The front has two orders, joined by broad side volutes. Below are three doors, one for each aisle, and above the main entrance is the window of the choir loft. The belfry has three small openings with little wrought-iron balconies, the work of a local craftsman; at the top is a pediment with a dentilled cornice. The interior is a Latin cross, with a nave and two aisles, and a barrel vault carried on piers decorated with pilasters.
The apse is reached by a broad central flight of steps: at the sides is the wooden choir, high up in the centre the canvas of the Assumption of Mary. The high altar is of marble, with bas-reliefs: below, the cross, Jesus with the two disciples of Emmaus and the anchor, above, the sacrifice of Isaac. In the side aisles are eight altars, four on each side, the chapel of the Sacrament closed by a wrought-iron gate, that of the Crucifix and the baptistery, with a majolica bas-relief of the baptism of Jesus above a hemispherical font with an octagonal rim. High up, ten decorated lunettes tell the life of the Madonna, from the Annunciation to the Dormition.
Visiting
Opening and Mass times should be checked with the parish. Four canvases in the presbytery, with episodes from the life of Mary, have been removed in view of the restoration of the church.
Our editors' tip
In the nave, on the left side, is a wooden pulpit carved by the Augusta master Stagnaro, and a little further on the organ with its loft, probably of the eighteenth century. Opposite the organ look at the arch: two small marble plaques record that the «banco senatorio» stood there, the bench of the town senate.
