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Home Magazine Events Spring FAI Days: the FAI Viterbo Delegation opens the complexes of Santa Maria in Gradi and San Carlo 23-24 march

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Spring FAI Days: the FAI Viterbo Delegation opens the complexes of Santa Maria in Gradi and San Carlo
23-24 march

On March 23rd and 24th, from 10 am to 5 pm, the initiative made possible by the valuable collaboration of Unitus.

The two properties are now home to the rectorate and the former Faculty of Political Science.

Viterbo, March 18, 2024 – For the Spring FAI Days, the Viterbo FAI Delegation, with the valuable collaboration of Unitus, will open to the public on March 23rd and 24th the monumental complexes of Santa Maria in Gradi and San Carlo, to celebrate the 45th anniversary of the establishment of the University of Tuscia.

Now in its 32nd edition, the event organized by the Italian Environment Fund constitutes the most important open-air event dedicated to the country’s cultural and landscape heritage: 750 locations in 400 cities will be open to the public with a voluntary contribution, thanks to the volunteers of 350 FAI delegations and groups active in all regions.

Home to the Rectorate and the DISUCOM (Department of Humanities, Communication, and Tourism), the monumental complex of Santa Maria in Gradi is an ancient Dominican convent built in the 13th century, the period of its greatest splendor. The monastery’s first phase of life extends from the years of Pope Innocent III and Emperor Frederick II to the period when Viterbo hosted the Papal Curia. These were the years of the city’s greatest splendor, in full building and cultural expansion, a nodal point of commercial traffic and pilgrim routes to the holy places.

In 1878, becoming state property, the entire complex passed to the Ministry of the Interior, which destined it for prison use, and only in the early 1990s will it be granted, with the exception of the church, to the University of Tuscia, which will carry out its recovery while respecting its historical-artistic stratification.

Home to the DISTU (Department of Linguistic-Literary Studies, Historical-Philological Studies, and Legal Studies), the complex of San Carlo is located in the Pianoscarano district, in the medieval center of Viterbo. In its various historic buildings, now renovated, it originated from the ancient church of San Nicola degli Scolari, which according to documents from 1152 was dependent on the abbey of Farfa. Remnants of the ancient building include the sail-shaped bell tower and the facade with characteristic arrow decoration. The internal structure features three large columns supporting three arches; traces remain of a late 15th-century fresco depicting the Virgin.

The dedication to San Carlo dates back to the first half of the seventeenth century: the church, together with the garden and the courtyard of the adjacent house, passed to the Confraternity of San Carlo, which opened a shelter for the disabled and the sick, replaced in 1639 by the so-called “Ospizio dei Vecchi” by the Congregation of the Oblates of Mary.

 

 

Visiting hours for the two complexes will be from 10 am to 5 pm, with the last entry at 4:30 pm, with a break from 1 pm to 2 pm.

No reservation is necessary.

FAI requests, on the occasion of the Spring Days, a voluntary contribution that will be used for the restoration and maintenance of FAI Properties in the national territory.

FAI Viterbo Delegation and UNITUS