Former Convent of San Francesco al Mercatale and Square of Libertà

The complex of San Francesco al Mercatale Originally located in the heart of the town, in the ancient Piazza del Mercatale, now Piazza della Libertà, the monastic complex of S. Francis represented the main religious settlement of Ostra Vetere for centuries. The works of art that escaped destruction and dispersion and were collected in the museum cover the broad chronological span from the fifteenth century to the eighteenth century. They are sufficient to document the privileged relationship of the faithful with a place that had to recall for a long time, together with the memory of the community’s ancient origins, examples of faith, dedication, social stability and, finally, cultural updating. The Franciscan settlement of Ostra Vetere has been remembered since 1292, when Pope Nicholas IV sent a precious relic of the cross of Christ to the convent, granting him permission to grant indulgences. They date back to the second century. XVII the first specific descriptions of the church. Originally a two-nave building, it underwent a radical restoration in 1635. «Nowadays» they recall the sources of the time «the said Church was reduced to a single nave […], removing it from the Gothic architecture, low and dark, to a slightly more adapted and modern architecture».The restoration involved, as attested by the paintings in the museum, replacing the ancient sacred images with new altarpieces, thus making it possible both to update the iconography on the most illustrious models of the Baroque and Ridolfian schools of art and to promote and renew the cult of saints belonging to the Franciscan Order. The lack of significant works of art in the eighteenth century corresponded to the progressive decline of the monastery, so much so that the injunction to close it, in the following century, was answered by four religious men, the only ones left to occupy the large spaces of the convent complex. When the monastery was included in the first measures to suppress religious corporations following the unification of Italy, it was secularized in 1861, passing under the administration of the municipality, which in turn handed it over for use to the Parish Abbot, who was allowed to keep the church open for worship. This, however, was not sufficient to ensure its safekeeping; indeed, it was in the easily speculated dispute over the respective responsibilities of the owner and the trustee that the religious building suddenly deteriorated, until its closure in 1909. The last act of the secular monument was consumed between 1914 and 1915. The Romanesque marble portal of the facade has been preserved – reused in the local church of S. Severe – and part of the fifteenth-century frescoes were removed, the church was razed to the ground to make way for the current square, which still overlooks, in addition to the bell tower and the cloister, some rooms of the former monastery.