Art, Monuments and Urban Design
On February 2, 2006, the town received recognition as an art city. The center retains its medieval labyrinthine street grids, and was once delimited by a perimeter wall punctuated by seven gates. The medieval town suffered from the earthquake of July 30, 1627. It is rich in Baroque palaces (including those of de Petris, del Sordo, de Lucretiis, Fraccacreta, Mascia, Recca, de Ambrosio, Pozzo, and Summantico). It had a number of monasteries, including three Benedictine monasteries (now the seat of the Court), a Celestine monastery (which became the town hall in 1813) and a Franciscans monastery (now the seat of the Municipal Library and Museum).
At the center of the town is the Romanesque church of San Severino, dedicated to the patron of the city. The cathedral, dedicated to Santa Maria Assunta has undergone many reconstructions. The interior has a 12th century baptismal font and paintings by eighteenth-century painters such as D'Elia, Primavera, and Solimena). The Church of San Giovanni Battista has paintings by Nicola Menzel. The cupola of the church of Santa Maria del Carmine was frescoed by Mario Borgoni.
The Teatro Comunale, dedicated to Verdi, is the largest theater building in Capitanata, premiered in 1937. It has a large public garden with century old avenues that converge on an artificial mound called Montagnella, and a platform with bronze statues and a large round stage for concerts. A number of small monuments are dispersed throughout the flower beds, including the marble bust (1837) of Matteo Tondi by Tito Angelini.
After the earthquake of 1627 and the gradual removal of walls, the town expanded with the creation of new districts. To contain the damage caused by frequent earthquakes, most of the buildings do not exceed two floors (and often were reduced to low ground floors and whitewashed gable roofs). The expansion of the city continued into the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.
Read more about this topic: San Severo
Famous quotes containing the words monuments, urban and/or design:
“If the Revolution has the right to destroy bridges and art monuments whenever necessary, it will stop still less from laying its hand on any tendency in art which, no matter how great its achievement in form, threatens to disintegrate the revolutionary environment or to arouse the internal forces of the Revolution, that is, the proletariat, the peasantry and the intelligentsia, to a hostile opposition to one another. Our standard is, clearly, political, imperative and intolerant.”
—Leon Trotsky (1879–1940)
“The city is a fact in nature, like a cave, a run of mackerel or an ant-heap. But it is also a conscious work of art, and it holds within its communal framework many simpler and more personal forms of art. Mind takes form in the city; and in turn, urban forms condition mind.”
—Lewis Mumford (1895–1990)
“If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life ... for fear that I should get some of his good done to me,—some of its virus mingled with my blood.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)