Description
The church of San Leonardo is a medieval stone church in Campobasso's historic center, halfway between the castle and the city that grew up outside the walls. It was the main church of the medieval city.
You climb to the church by a double stairway with a balustrade, built in the early 20th century in place of an older two-winged one, flanked by a stone colonnade. The gabled facade has a pointed-arch portal: the lamb with the cross is carved in the lunette.
The portal has plain colonnettes on one side and worked ones on the other, with capitals of leaves carved on several levels that give depth to the decoration.
To the left of the portal, a single lancet window is decorated with a double interlace of flowering branches. Next to it is set a stone carved with an ox: the same animal appears on the facade of nearby San Bartolomeo.
Inside, a single hall with three niches on each side, opened by arches on columns whose capitals are all different. Overhead, the ceiling has exposed wooden trusses; the apse is as wide as the whole nave.
On the walls hang 16th-century canvases, including a Last Supper and a Virgin running to meet the Lord.
The church was probably built in the 13th century and enlarged in the 14th, when most of the inhabitants moved down from the hill toward the lower part of the city. In 1338 a confraternity had its seat here, and the baptismal font was brought here from San Giorgio.
The earthquake of 1456 damaged it and brought down the bell tower, which was never rebuilt. From the 15th century to 1829 it was a collegiate church, run by a group of canons. The height of the walls suggests it was also built as a fortified building.
A 15th-century parchment hints at this: it says the canons met to discuss politics in a hall set up under the roof.
You climb to the church by a double stairway with a balustrade, built in the early 20th century in place of an older two-winged one, flanked by a stone colonnade. The gabled facade has a pointed-arch portal: the lamb with the cross is carved in the lunette.
The portal has plain colonnettes on one side and worked ones on the other, with capitals of leaves carved on several levels that give depth to the decoration.
To the left of the portal, a single lancet window is decorated with a double interlace of flowering branches. Next to it is set a stone carved with an ox: the same animal appears on the facade of nearby San Bartolomeo.
Inside, a single hall with three niches on each side, opened by arches on columns whose capitals are all different. Overhead, the ceiling has exposed wooden trusses; the apse is as wide as the whole nave.
On the walls hang 16th-century canvases, including a Last Supper and a Virgin running to meet the Lord.
The church was probably built in the 13th century and enlarged in the 14th, when most of the inhabitants moved down from the hill toward the lower part of the city. In 1338 a confraternity had its seat here, and the baptismal font was brought here from San Giorgio.
The earthquake of 1456 damaged it and brought down the bell tower, which was never rebuilt. From the 15th century to 1829 it was a collegiate church, run by a group of canons. The height of the walls suggests it was also built as a fortified building.
A 15th-century parchment hints at this: it says the canons met to discuss politics in a hall set up under the roof.