Marche: Sant’Angelo in Vado and Urbania

In Antiquity, the charming town of Sant’Angelo in Vado was known as Tifernum Mataurense. The last part of the name referred to the position of the town along the river Metaurus (now the Metauro). Tifernum Mataurense became a municipium, a town associated with Rome, in the early first century BCE. During the reign of the emperor Augustus (27 BCE-14 CE) it was included in Regio VI Umbria et Ager Gallicus. The citizens of the town were Roman citizens and members of the tribus Crustumina. Tifernum Mataurense was destroyed during the Gothic War (535-554) and later rebuilt by the Longobards, a people that had invaded Italy in 568. The Longobards named the resurrected town after Saint Michael the Archangel, one of their favourite saints. The word vado derives from Italian guado, which refers to a place where the river – in this case the Metauro – can be forded. This explains the name Sant’Angelo in Vado.

The principal attraction of the town is a Roman house (domus) with spectacular floor mosaics. It is known as the Domus del Mito, the “House of the Myth”, because of the mythological scenes in many of the mosaics. The house was built in the first century CE, abandoned in the third century, then reoccupied in the fourth and fifth centuries, but this time as a house with a workshop. The house covered a surface of about 1,000 square metres and was composed of 27 rooms. As was usual with Roman houses, it had a strong inward orientation, i.e. it had very few windows on the outside but was very open on the side facing the atrium and peristyle, the inner garden. The Domus del Mito was excavated in 2003-2005, and after a restoration of the mosaics and walls it was opened to the public. Information panels on the spot refer to the house as “the most conspicuous archaeological find in the past 50 years”. That may be a bit of an exaggeration, but the house is definitely splendid.

Visitors of the Domus del Mito first enter the atrium, which has a mosaic floor featuring a scene of the sea god Neptune and his wife Amphitrite. Neptune’s chariot is drawn by hippocampi, or seahorses, which are crosses between horses and fish. Around the chariot three dolphins are playing. The next room is the tablinum, the reception room of the house. Here we find a mosaic of Bacchus, the god of wine. Through the inner garden the inhabitants and visitors had access to the triclinium, the dining room. Here lies what is by far the most beautiful mosaic in the entire house. In the upper part we see a dog handler (magister canum) who sends his two dogs after a deer (on the left) and a swine (on the right). The emblema in the centre of the floor is decorated with various marine animals, which were no doubt often served here as lunch or dinner. The level of detail is very impressive. An eel attacks an octopus, which in its turns attacks a lobster. The lobster for its part grabs the eel, so it is rock-paper-scissors in Antiquity. The other marine animals have been identified as well: they are mullets and clams. Around the emblema we see images of birds, mythological creatures and geometrical patterns, including the well-known Solomon’s knot.

The other rooms in the house are quite interesting as well. We for instance see a bedroom (cubiculum), a kitchen and two rooms that are assumed to have been specifically used by either male or female inhabitants and guests. The rooms are called androecium and gynoecium respectively. Although the mosaic floors are a fair indication of the wealth of the owner of the house, even better evidence is the fact that he had a private bathroom. In Roman society this was truly exceptional. Most Romans who wanted to bathe (and were looking for social interaction) went to the public baths. The Domus del Mito, however, had its own hot water bath (caldarium), which was preceded by a dressing room (apodyterium) and followed by a massage room. The floor mosaic in the latter room has a pattern that strongly reminded me of King Minos’ labyrinth from Greco-Roman mythology.

We had specifically driven to Sant’Angelo in Vado to visit the Roman house with its mosaics. But there is a lot more to see in the town, although visitors should be aware that in August (the month that the Italians go on vacation) quite a few churches and museums will be closed. During our visit we basically only found the Duomo or co-cathedral of San Michele Arcangelo to be open. The building is a co-cathedral because it serves the composite archdiocese of Urbino-Urbania-Sant’Angelo in Vado. The history of the Duomo goes back to the Longobard era. The building was considerably smaller back then. When Pope Urbanus VIII (1623-1644) granted Sant’Angelo in Vado its own bishop, a first expansion took place. The Duomo then acquired its definitive form in the eighteenth century. The building was consecrated in 1770, at a time when Pope Clemens XIV (1769-1774) occupied Saint Peter’s throne. His father came from Sant’Angelo in Vado, which probably explains why we find Clemens’ coat of arms on the rather uninteresting façade. This pope was moreover granted a statue on the Piazza Umberto I, just around the corner from the Duomo.

The most important object in the co-cathedral is an icon of a Madonna and Child by an unknown painter from the fifteenth century. In the nineteenth century a separate chapel was built for this Madonna del Pianto – Madonna of the Tears – after she supposedly ended an epidemic of cholera. The chapel is immense and the icon doubtlessly of great religious value, but artistically there is not much to look at. The object is variously, but very tentatively, attributed to Gentile da Fabriano (ca. 1370-1427), Antonio Alberti or Zanino di Pietro. Gentile da Fabriano is of course pretty famous, but the icon is of insufficient quality to be a work of him. Antonio Alberti was from Ferrara, while Zanino di Pietro was a French-Venetian painter whose real name was Giovanni Charlier. Probably none of the three painters was responsible for this Madonna and Child. The best that can be said is that it was painted in their style.

Unfortunately, we found the church of Santa Caterina closed, so we could not admire its stucco decorations by Tommaso Amantini (1625-1675) from Urbania. The doors of the church of San Filippo Neri, situated on the aforementioned Piazza Umberto I, were closed as well. This church boasts of the presence of a wooden statue of the Virgin Mary by the famous sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti (1378-1452). The church of Santa Maria extra muros or Santa Maria dei Servi from 1331 can be found on the other side of the river. We crossed the bridge across the Metauro and made a number of panoramic photos, but the church unfortunately turned out to be closed. It should be noted that the building is actually no longer in use as a church. It now serves as a museum which has, among other things, works on display by the brothers Federico (1539-1609) and Taddeo (1529-1566) Zuccari, two painters who were natives of Sant’Angelo in Vado. The museum furthermore possesses a gilded bronze relief by Ghiberti and – according to my travel guide – a rare Roman bust of a man with a moustache. We did not get to see any of this, but we did spot another statue on the roundabout in front of the church. This statue represents a truffle dog (see the first image in this post). Sant’Angelo in Vado is famous for its white truffles. According to my travel guide 900 out of 4,000 inhabitants are cavatori or truffle hunters.[1]

Although it looked like it was going to rain, we decided to go to nearby Urbania anyway, where we arrived after a comfortable 15-minute drive to the east. Urbania was originally named Casteldurante. It was the place where Francesco Maria II della Rovere (1549-1631), the last Duke of Urbino, breathed his equally last breath. A few years later, in 1636, the town was renamed Urbania in honour of the aforementioned Pope Urbanus VIII. Our first destination in Urbania was the fifteenth-century Oratorio del Carmine. The walls of the oratory have been decorated with mediocre frescoes by the local painter Giorgio Picchi (ca. 1555-1605) and the altarpiece is a fresco of an enthroned Madonna and Child that according to my travel guide is attributed to Giotto (ca. 1266-1337). As I have seen a fair number of works by Giotto, I can safely say that this is definitely not a Giotto. A different source attributes to work to Giuliano da Rimini. Add the words “style of” and you have convinced me. I got the impression that quite a few parts of the fresco had been overpainted.

The sky had by now become so dark that rain was imminent. We quickly crossed the Piazza San Cristoforo, where a tall column is topped by the patron saint of the town, Saint Christopher. The saint is said to have once taken the young Christ on his shoulders and carried him across a river. It is a story that, it should be noted, is not mentioned at all in the Bible. On his column in Urbania he has been depicted with a staff in his left hand and Christ on his right shoulder. Obviously the Duomo or co-cathedral of San Cristoforo Martire is also dedicated to Saint Christopher. The history of the Duomo is supposed to go back to the sixth century or – perhaps more realistically – the eighth. The spot where the Duomo now stands may have previously been occupied by a temple dedicated to Hercules. This temple was demolished and replaced with a church dedicated to the Christian equivalent of Hercules, i.e. Saint Christopher. The old church was rebuilt in Renaissance style in 1467, but the current building largely dates from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In 1759 the three naves of the Duomo were replaced with a single nave, creating a large open space. The façade of the building dates from 1870. The only decorations that we find on it are statues of two local female saints, Veronica Giuliani (1660-1727) and Margherita della Metola (ca. 1287–1320).

The most important artwork in the Duomo is a crucifix from ca. 1320 by Pietro da Rimini (who was not a relative of Giuliano da Rimini) or in any case the school of Rimini. The splendid work originally adorned a different church in Urbania and has only been in the co-cathedral since 1974. The paintings in the various chapels are of questionable quality and do not warrant discussion here. A work that is worth mentioning is the simple funerary monument of Augusto Chigi, who died in 1651. He was the brother of Pope Alexander VII (1655-1667). Lastly, beneath the high altar there is a reliquary made by Antonio del Pollaiuolo (1431-1498) which contains a shoulder bone of Saint Christopher. According to tradition, it was this part of his body that had touched the Saviour.

In the meantime, it had started raining cats and dogs. Luckily we received a warm welcome close to the Duomo at restaurant El Pignatin, where we had a fine lunch. Although the rain had not yet stopped, we decided to drive past the church of the Santissimo Crocifisso. This church was founded by the aforementioned Francesco Maria II della Rovere, who found his final resting place inside. Regretfully we could not admire his funerary monument. We tried the doors of the church, but they turned out to be locked.

Much of the information for this post came from the Bradt travel guide Umbria & the Marche (2021), p. 276-278. Additional information came from the information panels in the church and other attractions.

Note

[1] Bradt travel guide Umbria & the Marche (2021), p. 277.