MADONNA DEL POGGIO’S CHURCH

Built around 1609, it was extended in 1690. The façade is built in small blocks of the local reddish, peperino stone. The single aisle interior boasts a large, baroque high altar completely carved, together with the chancel, out of walnut wood. In the adjacent former convent, belonging to the Carmelites first and the Franciscans later, stands a small cloister under the porticos of which one can admire tempera paintings portraying franciscan life, presumably a work by Fra Giovanni Antonio da Padova dating back to the end of the 17th century. One of the temperas depicts – although in anachronistic clothes – with a view of Soriano in the background, a Pope surrounded by the Papal court and a figure kneeling down wearing a habit like the one of St Francis of Assisi: it is Pope Onorio III in the act of turning over to Francis the Rule approved on November 29th 1223 with the famous bull “Solet annuere”