Chiesa di Sant'Agostino (Corciano)

On an olive-covered hill facing Corciano's southern gate stands the Augustinian complex of Sant'Agostino, founded by a papal bull of 1334. The church's later Baroque remodelling includes altarpieces, a wooden choir dated 1746 and a frescoed seventeenth-century cloister.

Why it matters

Pope John XXII's bull of 15 March 1334 authorised the Augustinian house on land granted by the Comune di Corciano. From 1397 the convent also ran a hospital dedicated to Santa Maria, serving travellers on the road below. The hilltop complex faces Porta Santa Maria across the saddle. The church's later interior and the choir and cloister preserve traces of Augustinian community life.

What to notice

The limestone facade retains a medieval gabled profile, with eighteenth-century square windows and an entrance portal crowned by an Etruscan funerary urn. Along the sides, double brick courses and two blocked Gothic windows mark the earlier structure. The bell tower has two sails set at right angles. Inside, the single nave has monumental altars and stuccoes. The right-hand altars include a canvas of San Nicola da Bari giving alms and a Crucifixion scene with San Michele Arcangelo, San Macario, San Sebastiano and San Rocco. In the presbytery is the walnut-root choir of 1746 beneath stuccoes bearing the Augustinian arms and frescoes of Santa Monica and Sant'Agostino. The cloister preserves seventeenth-century frescoes of the Stories of Saint Augustine.

Context and history

The Augustinians established the complex under the 1334 bull. A hospital dedicated to Santa Maria is recorded from 1397. The municipality describes a Gothic church remodelled in the eighteenth century and decorated again in the nineteenth century with stuccoes by Padre Raffaele Lauro. The convent's goods passed to the state after Italian unification. The church's processional Gonfalone, painted by Benedetto Bonfigli in 1472, was long kept here and is now in the parish church of Santa Maria Assunta.