Anagni Cathedral site features

The cathedral stands at the top of Anagni with its three entrances facing east, in a plain, heavy wall that is almost entirely without ornament -- the decision the building makes on the outside is to look like strength rather than wealth. Beside the left-hand entrance, behind a grate, is a fourteenth-century fresco of the Madonna enthroned between St Catherine of the Wheel and Saint Anthony Abbot. The west end is the other face of the building and the better one: three apses stepping out above a flight of steps. The Romanesque bell tower stands 30 metres, opening through single, double and triple windows as it rises; an iron frame was fitted inside it in 1938 to carry its five bells.

The church

Inside there is a nave and two aisles, the work of the maestri comacini. The floor is the first thing worth looking down at: Cosmatesque mosaic laid in 1231 by the Cosmati, the Roman family of marble-workers whose name the whole technique now carries. Over the central door, on the inside, a lunette holds the Madonna and Child between Saints Magnus and Secondina, from the late thirteenth century.

The main apse holds three works by Vassalletto, commissioned by Bishop Landone: a twisted column inlaid with mosaic to carry the paschal candle, the bishop's throne, and the ciborium over the altar. Above them the Apostles run across the apse wall, each with his attribute, painted by Borgogna in the seventeenth century, with the saints venerated at Anagni, the Annunciation and the Eternal Father above by Pietro and Giovanni Gagliardi. The left apse has the disciples at Emmaus and adoring angels; the right has the marriage of Saint Joseph and the Virgin and the death of Saint Joseph.

The crypt

A stairwell on the left side of the church goes down to it. The crypt is dedicated to Saint Magnus, the city's patron, and was built at the same time as the church above it. Low Romanesque arches cross and recross over a floor of original Cosmatesque mosaic, and every surface above that floor is painted -- 540 square metres of it, across twenty-one vaults and the walls between them.

The altars hold the bodies: Saint Magnus, Saints Aurelia and Neomisia, Saint Secondina, and relics of Saint Oliva, Saint Sebastian, Saint Caesarius and other martyrs. A narrow passage leads off to the oratory of Saint Thomas Becket.

The crypt frescoes

Painted from the early twelfth century and finished, on the Italian account, by 1231: 540 square metres by anonymous painters of three separate workshops, known as the First Master or Master of the Translations, the Second Master or Master Ornatista, and the Third Master or Master of Anagni -- the last also credited with the Aula Gotica frescoes at Santi Quattro Coronati in Rome. The twenty-one vaults carry Old and New Testament scenes including the story of the Ark of the Covenant and the Apocalypse; the walls carry the miracles of Saint Magnus and the lives of the saints buried in the altars below them.

The creation cycle, with Hippocrates and Galen

The rare thing in the crypt. One cycle sets out the creation of the world as a proportional union of the four elements and of man, the microcosm inside the macrocosm -- and it puts the physicians Hippocrates and Galen into the painting alongside the Platonic theory of the elements. Medical and philosophical material, on a church ceiling, in the thirteenth century.

The crypt pavement

Laid between 1224 and 1231 by Cosma di Jacopo di Lorenzo with his sons Jacopo and Luca, and still the original floor.

The church pavement

1231, Cosmatesque mosaic by the Cosmati, the Roman marble-workers whose family name became the word for the technique.

Vassalletto's three works in the apse

The episcopal throne, the ciborium over the high altar and a twisted column inlaid with mosaic for the paschal candle, all commissioned by Bishop Landone. The sources disagree on the year: the Italian account dates them to 1263 and the English dates the ciborium to 1267.

The lunette over the central door

Late thirteenth century, on the inside face: the Madonna and Child between Saint Magnus and Saint Secondina, the two saints whose bodies are in the crypt below.

The oratory of Saint Thomas Becket

Reached by a narrow passage off the crypt, and frescoed with stories from Genesis, other biblical episodes, saints and human figures -- among them a sketchy Templar sinopia, the underdrawing left visible.

The bell tower

Romanesque, 30 metres, with single-, double- and triple-light windows stacked as it rises. Restored in 1938, when an iron frame was built inside it to take the weight of five bells.