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FORMER CONVENT OF SAN FRANCESCO
The San Francesco complex is located outside the oldest part of the city, on the Via Verentana, which connects Montefiascone to Marta. His origin is traced back to the earliest years of the Franciscan movement, precisely to 1222, when St. Francis himself, passing through Montefiascone during a journey to the Kingdom of Naples, left the follower Morico there to spread his principles.
The ancient convent is now the seat of the Civil Hospital which was moved there in 1875, following its suppression, which took place on 12 September 1874.
See also: Church of San Francesco
HISTORY
The San Francesco complex is located outside the oldest part of the city, on the Via Verentana, which connects Montefiascone to Marta. The oldest document attesting its existence dates back to 1291. It is a donation with which Pope Nicholas IV granted the convent a garden close to it. However, its origin is traced back to the earliest years of the Franciscan movement, precisely to 1222, when St. Francis himself, passing through Montefiascone during a journey to the Kingdom of Naples, left the follower Morico there to spread his principles. The ancient convent is now the seat of the Civil Hospital which was moved there in 1875, following its suppression, which took place on 12 September 1874. This event made it necessary to renovate and expand the existing premises to adapt to the new needs of the ‘hospital, which in fact caused the transformation of most of the original structures, now attested by only a few remains: some imprints of arches and vaults, the mullioned windows, the quadrangular cloister and the small chapel inside the hospital constitute the surviving elements of the original building structure. Even the church, leaning against the northern part of today’s hospital complex, has undergone many transformations over time that have profoundly altered its original appearance. The analysis and comparison of documentary sources and material evidence suggest the hypothesis of an original Latin cross building, characterized by a single nave with a wooden ceiling and a transept covered with cross vaults. Around the middle of the eighteenth century the left arm of the transept became part of the monastery following the reduction of the church to a single room. These deeply transformed structures have been used as a small chapel inside the hospital, in which the original vaulted roof is attested.
DESCRIPTION
The ancient convent, now home to the Civil Hospital, is a rectangular wing consisting of two bodies, of which the one that rests on the church, although smaller than the other, is taller and wider. In the upper part of the east front there is a mullioned window within a slightly splayed ogival frame and below there are two quadrangular windows opened in recent times. On the north front, an oblong buffered window appears, located lower than the level of the mullioned window, with respect to which it is also longer, so much so that it is currently located in an intermediate position between the two internal floors. In the upper one is the current hospital chapel, of which the mullioned window forms the window behind the altar. This chapel is made up of two rooms of different sizes. The first, rectangular, is covered by a double sloping roof with small wooden beams. The second room of the chapel is grafted onto it through a pointed arch. The latter has a square plan and is covered by an ogival cross, the ribs of which start almost at the level of the current floor. A small rectangular room is inserted into the southern wall of the square space which acts as a sacristy. The chapel, as it appears today, is the result of works carried out in the 1960s in which the attic of the rectangular part was created, destroying a large staircase that connected the hospital to the sacristy of the church, which then it also served as a chapel for the sick. The altar was consecrated on January 19, 1964. A quadrangular cloister also remains of the ancient convent, whose arches have been plugged to create rooms inside. However, the faces of the pillars, the profiles of the round arches and, above them, a frame are visible externally on the two short sides. In the center of the ancient cloister there is still a well.
ESSENTIAL BIBLIOGRAPHY
G. Breccola – M. Mari, Montefiascone, Grotte di Castro 1979.
C. Sensi, Montefiascone medievale. Gli edifici del centro storico, tesi di laurea, Università degli Studi della Tuscia di Viterbo, A.A. 1996-1997.
G. Breccola, Montefiascone. Guida alla scoperta, Montefiascone 2006.
Montefiascone arte città, ex Convento di san Francesco (attuale ospedale).
Montefascone città d’arte, cultura e tradizione.
