Chiesa di Santa Cecilia

Documented on 3 December 1271 — thirteen years before the first stone of the cathedral was laid — the little church of Santa Cecilia is the oldest recorded place of worship in Spilimbergo, a weathered single room whose carved figures, faint frescoes and one Narvesa altarpiece hold the town's most humble memory.

Why it matters

Santa Cecilia is the oldest church in Spilimbergo documented in the surviving records; it may be contemporary with the castle or older. Graves at the foot of its walls point to its long history.

Its splayed windows, unadorned north door with two simply carved figures, and surviving traces of fresco preserve features of the medieval church.

What to notice

The church is oriented east to west. Its two early windows with splayed reveals were replaced in 1506 by round-headed stone windows. On the north side, a door of soft yellowish stone rises beneath a full arch without an archivolt; two small figures are carved in the same stone. They are identified as Saint Peter with a key and chalice and Saint Cecilia holding a cross, perhaps Lombard, against her breast.

Inside, the plaster holds ghosts: traces of fresco survive, including a Madonna with Child, Saint Mary Magdalene, Saint Cecilia and an Annunciation. The altarpiece of Saint Cecilia, painted by Gasparo Narvesa and dated 1595, is a late Renaissance work in a room of fragments.

Context and history

Around 1500, after losing its religious function, the church was converted to a mortuary cell and its apse demolished. The bell tower was removed in the second half of the nineteenth century. The building was altered several times and renovated as a whole in the late 1970s.

The surviving frescoes are among the traces of medieval artistic life in the borgo, alongside those at San Giovanni dell'Eremo.