Key to Umbria: Amelia
 


Torre Civica (1050)


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This lovely twelve-sided bell tower next to the Duomo is one of the few structures to have survived in Amelia from the Middle Ages.  Its inner staircase leads up to three higher floors, the uppermost of which houses four bells.

    

The tower in its present form is the result of three consecutive phases of construction or reconstruction:

  1. The presumed date of its original construction derives from the inscription “ANO DNI ML” on a block near the base (illustrated above, on the left).  This lower section is built almost exclusively from salvaged Roman materials. 

  2. The middle section, which contains traces of single and bifore windows, probably dates to the 12th century. 

  3. Another inscription (illustrated above, on the right) records that Bishop Torquato Perotti rebuilt the upper part of the tower in 1641.  It seems to have been used as a campanile during the rebuilding of the Duomo after the fire of 1629.

     

The tower has a number of interesting architectural fragments embedded in it, which include

  1. the two Roman reliefs illustrated above:

  2. a relief of men in combat, which possibly depicted a scene from a spectacle in the amphitheatre; and

  3. a scene from a marriage, which probably came from a funerary monument, and which was documented in a sketch (1564) by the sculptor and antiquarian Giovanni Antonio Dosio that survives in the Staatsbibliothek, Berlin; and

  4. a sundial [details?].






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