This is no longer a church: it is a museum, and the main piece in the collection is the church itself. It was born at the end of the fourteenth century with a Benedictine monastery, on a spot where monks had been since 1025, and some decades ago it joined the museum circuit of Cascia together with Palazzo Santi.
What to see
The fifteenth century left it two cycles of frescoes. In the apse painted the so-called Master of the Dormitio of Terni, with scenes of the life of saint Anthony, the evangelists and an Annunciation; in the nuns' choir worked Nicola di Ulisse from Siena, with stories of Jesus and the cardinal virtues. In the choir too is a sculptural group in painted wood with Tobias and the angel, the work of an artist from the Marche of the late fifteenth century.
The hall, on the other hand, is of the eighteenth century: the earthquake of 1703 brought everything down and the church was rebuilt within a few years, with a single nave and three chapels a side. On the counter-front is a seventeenth-century organ, built by an organ maker from Leonessa, with five stops, mechanical action and a painted wooden case: an instrument left as it was.
Visiting
The church is in the old centre of Cascia; it has a museum ticket and museum hours, often combined with the other site, and after the tremors that struck the Valnerina it is worth checking the openings. An hour.
Our editors' tip
Go up close to the altars in the chapels and look hard: they are not marble, they are wood painted to look like it. In the mountains marble did not arrive, and fake marble was a serious trade, with its veining worked out by hand. From a distance you would not notice, and that was exactly the point.