Chiesa di Santa Maria dei Servi

Renaissance stile masters this church. I love it so much!

Church of Santa Maria dei Servi. The Church of Santa Maria dei Servi in ​​Orvieto is a Christian church of Catholic rite, one of the oldest on the Orvieto cliff, dating back to the arrival in the city of the Sienese order of the Servants of Mary. The Church of Santa Maria dei Servi in ​​Orvieto at first sight seems quite recent but it is only the facade that was rebuilt in 1857 while the rest of the structure dates back to 1200, inside there are valuable works dating back to the fourteenth century. To visit.

Beautiful, recently renovated, with anti-suggestion elements clearly visible

The traditional Holy Mass is magnificent!

The first construction of the church, in Gothic style, dates back to 1259, on the initiative of the Mendicant Order of the Servants of Mary, born in 1233 in Florence. In 1265 the Servites, in view of the construction of the convent, bought houses and land in the parish territory then called San Martino, where there were five small churches now disappeared and countless houses of peasants and craftsmen, of which even today we can see the interesting types. The original wall structure of the church, of which the external side walls with visible tuffs are visible, has undergone numerous collapses over the centuries, until the reconstruction in neoclassical forms of the second half of the nineteenth century, based on a project by the architect Virgilio Vespignani. The white two-storey façade has two deep niches at the sides of the tympanum portal that create chiaroscuro effects. Between 1270 and 1320, the church was decorated with important works: the Madonna enthroned with the Child by Coppo di Marcovaldo, detached fresco and now kept in the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, and the polyptych on a panel by Simone Martini, depicting the Madonna and Child, to whom she offers a flower, with St. Catherine and St. John the Baptist, St. Mary Magdalene and St. Paul. At the beginning of the '500 Luca Signorelli, while he was painting the Chapel of San Brizio in the Cathedral, he realized on the walls a band of rounds representing on one side some exemplary friars worshiped by the Servite Order, and on the other the popes residing in Orvieto over the centuries previous; the last painted pontiff seems to be Alexander VI, who died in 1503. In 1616 the high altar was demolished and replaced by a stone altar of Bagnoregio. In the same century, five altars were built on the walls of the church, in honor of the blessed and friars of the Servite Order who had held important roles during the community settlement in Orvieto. Among these the altar of 1682 dedicated to the Blessed Giuliana Falconieri from Florence, spiritual guide of the laity adhering to the Order, depicted in the 18th century in a painting by Pietro Castellucci in which we can see the outline of the Church of the Servants and the spiers of the Cathedral of Orvieto; near the officiating priest there is the blessed Tommaso da Orvieto, holding the traditional twig of fresh leaves and figs: his relics were exhumed and placed under the main altar of the church while, during the same period, the painter Pietro Bacci painted on the walls ten medallions representing the life and the miracles performed by the saint. After 1860, following the suppression of the religious Corporations, the church became a stable for the horses of the border guards who resided in the convent, until in 1870 it was put up for sale and purchased by the parish priest Father Francesco Riscossa. Then the works were resumed, to give a symmetrical order to the whole, reducing the altars from ten to seven. The renovated church has three naves, with eight large chapels on each side, connected by a corridor, which leads to the tribune, an ancient choir adapted to the sacristy, with a mullioned window, the only evidence of the original Gothic building. Near the inner wall of the façade two small chapels were built, closed by wrought iron gates with inscriptions that recall the restructuring and consecration in 1875. Damaged by the earthquake of 1997 and closed for security reasons, it was consolidated and reopened to the public on Christmas night in 1998.