Chiesa di San Salvatore

In Foligno's San Salvatore quarter, the Church of San Salvatore preserves medieval paintings and a 1437 triptych behind a white-and-pink stone facade with three pointed portals. Its eighteenth-century interior is associated in regional sources with Luigi Vanvitelli, while archival and local accounts credit Pietro di Domenico Loni with the overall work and attribute one chapel to Vanvitelli.

Why it matters

A Benedictine abbey stood here by the tenth century, according to the archival record. Around 1200, when the monks moved to Sassovivo, a community of canons took their place and the church became a collegiate foundation. The building preserves paintings including the 1437 triptych by Bartolomeo di Tommaso. The regional tourism portal associates the eighteenth-century interior with Luigi Vanvitelli; other sources identify Pietro di Domenico Loni as responsible for its overall completion, with a chapel designed by Vanvitelli.

What to notice

The facade is built in white and pink stone, with three ogival portals and three small rose windows added in 1889. Inside, fresco fragments from the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries survive. To the right of the entrance is a fourteenth-century Madonna del Latte with angels, a donor, and Saints Ursula and Catherine of Alexandria. The triptych of 1437 by Bartolomeo di Tommaso anchors the collection, alongside a San Francesco di Paola by Francesco Appiani, a Pietà by Luca Mancini and a fourteenth-century wooden Crucifix. Other works once in the church are now in the Diocesan Museum.

Context and history

The church grew beside the Benedictine monastery known as the abbadia, a name later given to the district. Around 1200 a priory of three canons was established after the monks moved to Sassovivo. Documents from 1226 and 1239 record the prior and canons. The present building took shape no earlier than the fourteenth century, and the collegiate chapter lasted until 1860. The parish was established around the mid-sixteenth century and absorbed the territory of the suppressed parish of Sant'Agostino in 1986. The 1997 earthquake led to restoration work, after which the church reopened for worship.