Tempio di San Liberale

Sacile's Temple of San Liberale is a circular twentieth-century shrine built in 1926 to replace a church damaged during the First World War.

Why it matters

The temple preserves the cult of San Liberale, co-patron of Sacile, and commemorates local losses in the Great War. Its austere form contrasts with the town's Venetian-influenced monuments. The building's design was inspired by a temple depicted in Raphael's Marriage of the Virgin rather than by a local architectural tradition.

What to notice

The interior is circular and deliberately without elaborate decoration. Relics of San Liberale were placed beneath the high altar when the church opened for worship in the early 1960s. The temple's isolated position at the end of Viale Zancanaro gives it a distinct relationship with the town's urban landscape.

Context and history

According to local tradition, a farmer found bones in a field after his oxen knelt, prompting a wayside shrine to San Liberale. A temple replaced it in 1683, and relics attributed to a Roman martyr were transferred from the catacombs in 1694. During the 1917 occupation, the church was damaged and profaned; it was demolished in 1926. Engineer Riccardo Bertoja designed the present building as a memorial to Sacile's fallen. It was completed and opened for worship in the early 1960s.