Montone is an Italian town of 1 607 inhabitants in the province of Perugia in Umbria. It rises in the area known as the Upper Tiber Valley, about 40 km from Perugia and near Città di Castello and Umbertide, on the highest part of a hill overlooking the confluence of the Tiber and Carpina rivers.
Country of medieval origin, it was, in the 10th
century, a fief of the Marquises of Colle and later of the Del
Monte. Already in 1121 the fortified village, albeit under the
direct control of Perugia, had the possibility of giving itself
statutes and administering public affairs through its own
magistrates.
The presence of the Fortebracci family in the
locality is documented since the 13th century. This family included
the famous leader Andrea, perhaps the greatest mercenary captain of
his time. He, better known as Braccio, created in the first decades
of the 15th century a strong state in central Italy between the
present regions of Umbria, Lazio and Abruzzo, one of the most daring
attempts to create a state independent from the power of the Papal
State. On 28 August 1414 Montone was elevated to a county by John
XXIII, considered anti-pope, and Braccio received the investiture,
for him and for his descendants.
Ten years later, Martin V,
pope recognized by all as legitimate, repeated the investiture in
favor of Carlo, son of Braccio, who died in 1424 in the battle of
L'Aquila. In 1473 Carlo Fortebracci, following in his father's
footsteps, fought in the service of the Serenissima Republic of
Venice and managed to drive the Turks back into the sea, receiving a
thorn from Christ's crown as a gift for this service. Carlo sends
the precious relic to Montone and decrees the feast of the thorn on
Easter Monday.
Passed to the Vitelli at the beginning of the
16th century, Montone was annexed to the Papal State towards the
middle of the 16th century.
Castles
Ruins Rocca di Braccio with the former
convent of Santa Caterina, today the municipal historical archive
Rocca d'Aries
Religious architectures
Church of San
Francesco
Built in the early fourteenth century according to the
architectural styles of the mendicant orders, the church, with a
single nave surmounted by wooden trusses, ends with a bright
polygonal apse with richly frescoed ribbed vaults. The frescoes,
which also affect the walls of the building, are attributable to
four successive pictorial cycles. The church was for a long time
patronage of the Fortebracci and then of the Malatesta, who
commissioned the interior decorations.
Parish church of San
Gregorio Magno
The ancient collegiate church of the Canons, once
named after the patron saint St. John the Baptist, stands along the
valley of the Lana stream at the foot of the former monastery of San
Francesco (once Castro Veteri). It is a fortified construction with
three naves, divided by brick pillars and combined arches, built in
Romanesque style, probably on a previous early medieval building
(VIII-IX century), of which a stone frieze remains placed in a
parapet of the central single lancet window of the abiside. The main
apse houses a gilded wooden aedicule, finely worked, which once
housed the four polychrome wooden statues of the deposed Christ, the
Virgin, St. John the Evangelist and Joseph of Arimatea, all from the
thirteenth century, now housed in the local museum Street number.
The two side aisles close with two renaissance aedicules in pietra
serena.It is located in a private riding school.
Other
churches
Church of the Madonna delle Grazie
Collegiate Church
of Santa Maria
Former Church of San Fedele, today the municipal
auditorium
Church of San Pietro in Carpini
Former Church of
San Lorenzo XIV century. loc. Carpini (Borgo Coloti)
Church of
the Madonna dei Confini, is located at the end of the road in the
San Lorenzo district, a road that climbs from the hamlet of Corlo on
the Scontrini hill, on the border between Montone and Pietralunga.
It is a small church, with simple Umbrian rural architecture, which
contains a fresco from 1765.