Ascoli Piceno Italy

Battistero di S.Giovanni

Battistero di San Giovanni
The Baptistery stands in the centre of a traffic island, on the left-side of Cathedral, and represents one of the most interesting monuments of the sacred Italian architecture. It is a square domed construction with an octagonal lantern embellished on the sides by elegant arched three-lighted blind windows, except for the part ovelooking the eastern part which has two mullioned windows with two lights. The Baptistery is composed of two very distinct buildings: the interior and the exterior. The interior is certainly the most ancient. The thesis regarding the age of the monument are discordant especially in the light of different types of building used materials. If the interior part, with every possibility, was constructed during the era of Costantino Magno, at the same time as the adjacent Basilica, now Cathedral, was being raised, upon the ruine of a pagan temple possibly devoted to Ercole, the exterior one in blocks of travertine, originating from ancient nearby buildings, probably dates from the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The interior, an octagonal room with four apses, keeps a circular basin used for full-immertion baptisms, according to the ancient custom of Christians. Here is also a Gothic baptismal font on a spiral column, gone to the thirteenth century. The altar shows Battesimo di Cristo by Venceslao Corrigioli da Reggio, of the sixteenth century.

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