Abbey of Sant’Urbano di Domo

On an isolated plain a few kilometres from the town of Apiro, on the left bank of the Esinante stream, stands what remains of the ancient monastery of S. Urbano di Domo. The first mention of this Benedictine monastery dates from 1033 and, according to scholars, the only surviving evidence from that period would be part of the church building. Historians, on the other hand, place the consecration of the church's altar in 1086. The abbey was rebuilt in the 12th century adopting – rather unusually for the area – a decorative system based on alternating the colours of the building materials, above all in the external masonry, where the white of the limestone emphasises the salient architectural elements (half-columns, small hanging arches, cornices), while the dark colour of the sandstone dominates the background. In the 13th century further restorations, which followed serious disturbances caused by the inhabitants of Apiro, who devastated the monastery in the early years of that century, gave the building its present form. This rebuilding involved alterations to the façade and the addition of the four buttresses on the north side, without affecting the area of the portal. More substantial were the interventions inside the church: the vaults were completely rebuilt (except for the slightly pointed barrel vault covering the nave), and the dividing wall with two pointed-arched openings was built between the raised presbytery area and the nave. The decorative apparatus found on capitals, cornices and imposts is varied, characterised by geometric and zoomorphic motifs in early medieval taste, carved in a summary and naïve manner. According to the scholar Hildegard Sahler, the vault over the nave of the church of S. Urbano is “perhaps the oldest pointed barrel vault” in the Marche and beyond. The triple-apsed east end is well preserved, except for the small south apse, which would need restoration. One is immediately struck by the marked colour effect of the whole: on an almost entirely brown wall stand out the details of the pilaster strips (consisting of white stone half-columns rising from about a metre above the ground, with decorated bases and topped by capitals carved with geometric motifs). Around the base of the three apses runs a uniform plinth, projecting slightly beyond the point from which the pilaster strips rise: there are four of these on the central apse and two on each of the lateral ones. The crowning consists of Lombard arches in white stone (three between each pair of pilaster strips), supported by graceful small corbels, some of them carved. The central apse is decorated with a “chequerboard” motif (see photo: apse, detail). The crowning of the lateral apses, on the other hand, consists of plain white stones. The decoration on the small corbels and capitals is much better preserved on the north apse than on the south one (see photo: apse area). In the central apse open three tall, narrow round-headed windows, with frame and splay faced in white stone; a window lower but wider than those of that apse, though less refined in its decoration, opens in each of the other two apses. In the plinth of the central apse there is a single-light window that lights the crypt. In the south apse the single-light window has been replaced by a modern window, while in the north one only the white stone arch of the old single-light window, now almost completely walled up, can be seen. The building material is local stone (brown sandstone), well squared, though of variable size. The laying is nevertheless fair. Above the apse the masonry (evidently built later) has a series of small pointed arches set into it, on variously decorated small corbels. Because of these decorative elements, made with a white stone different from that used for the other decorations of the apses, this part of the building is certainly the result of rebuilding, as is also evident on the south side, where some recent buildings have been erected, perhaps on an earlier plan corresponding to structures of the old monastery. The south wall of the church is not entirely visible (part of it can be seen from inside the restaurant dining room). The north side has four massive wedge-shaped buttresses (see photo: north side), added later, which have interrupted the original geometric articulation of the surfaces, created with pilaster strips and small hanging arches similar to those decorating the apses, which must once have run along the whole eaves line of the sides of both aisles. This decoration now survives only on the north aisle, where a few pieces of small arches and of white stone half-column pilaster strips remain in place (see photo: north side, detail). The single-light windows opened in the north side repeat the decorative motif of the apse windows: two of them remain visible, while a third can be seen to have been positioned near a half-column pilaster strip. The masonry of this side of the building is very similar to that of the apses. The roof of the nave, near the east end, has been raised (probably an alteration made at a time later even than the construction of the four large buttresses on the north side). The façade of the present church is gabled and gives no hint of the original dimensions; perhaps there was also a portico. The entrance is a small door; the corner supports of the lintel have corbels carved with plant motifs, unfortunately for the most part chiselled away. The portal has three mouldings: this opening leads into an atrium and not into the church proper, which is reached instead by descending a few steps. continued >>>