News about the church of San Martino vescovo di Tours

6 – NEWS ABOUT THE CHURCH OF SAN MARTINO, BISHOP OF TOURS

The place is first mentioned in a document of AD 768 as Monasterium Sancti Martini, and probably took its name from the saint himself; three documents, of 983, 988 and 999, speak of the «terra Sancti Martini» situated «in loco Fridana» near the Via «Petrosa», from whose description one may guess the line of the Via Francigena.

The church of San Martino has undergone continual alteration over the years, and the one we see today is of 1904. The building is a splendid example of composite Romanesque style, and of the old church nothing remains but the bell tower with its Ghibelline merlons. The church of San Martino in Val Freddana was indeed rebuilt between 1898 and 1904 by Gaetano Orzali in an eclectic style, and today it is a religious «casket» set in a simple, bucolic world — a spiritual island where one can reflect and think, lulled by the chimes of the original Romanesque bell tower with its Ghibelline merlons. During the Second World War, by contrast, this village was an area of reprisals between Germans and partisans and teemed with evacuated, hungry people. The exhausted population had to fear the constant round-ups by soldiers on the ground and the Allied air raids.

Among the works are the Christ by Giovanni Lorenzetti of 2005 and the cycle of frescoes by Alfredo Catarsini of 1944, which takes in the apse and two side frescoes.

On the road leading to the church, today Via Alfredo Catarsini, stand the G. Puccini school and the Civic Library, where six finalist works of the 20th regional Alfredo Catarsini prize of 2022, inspired by the novel Giorni neri, are permanently displayed.

Visit the site «Catarsini fra di noi» made by the pupils of the G. Puccini school of San Martino in Freddana, which offers important first-hand accounts