Church of Santa Maria della Consolazione

The Church of Santa Maria della Consolazione rises between Todi and the River Tiber valley. The church was built between 1508 and 1607, on the spot where a few years before some miraculous recoveries happened close to an ancient aedicule with pictures representing the Virgin holding the Infant Jesus and St Catherine of Alexandria.

According to the legend, a modest local worker (blind in one eye) called Iole di Cecco, while working to free the area around Santa Maria and St Giorgio from brambles, cleared (using his own napkin) the Virgin Mary's portrait. Later on he dried up his face and eyes with the same napkin, and miraculously recovered the sight.

The 'temple of consolation' is one of the highest Renaissance art example in Umbria. The Greek cross plant, characterized by five cupolas (one central and one each apsis) should have been designed by the school of Bramante, even if some art critics think it was made by Antonio da Sangallo the Younger, anyhow he surely was entrusted for the site management. The interiors are particularly light and airy and house the statues of Pope Martino of Todi, the twelve Apostles while the northern apse nearby the Baroque altar, the picture Virgin holding the Infant Jesus, still believed as a miracle worker.

The locals were so devoted to the Virgin that, to make up the construction of what was considered an architectural ruin (a sacristy built in 1613 on the northern side of the temple), the whole citizens rose up to obtain the demolition in 1862.