Church of St Giovanni Decollato

The church was originally one of the properties belonging to the Confraternity of the Flagellants of the Holy Cross or Brotherhood of Compassion dedicated to charitable works. In 1504, the Franciscan nuns who had been at Montecalvo purchased a part of the Hospice belonging to the Flagellants who, in the meantime, had removed to what is now the Church and Monastery of the Holy Trinity. The brotherhood built a dividing wall to separate the part that had been sold from the remainder where, in 1591, the new Church of St. John the Beheaded was inaugurated. The latter is also known as the Church of the Black Brotherhood, so-called because of the black cowls worn by the members of the fraternity. Since 1974 it has been the headquarters of the Famiglia dei Santantoniari who became the legal owners on 16th July 1992. Since 1975, on 17th january every year, the Feast of St. Anthony Abbot has been officially celebrated here. Inside, in an imposing reliquary, an important relic of the Saint is preserved which was extracted in 2012 from the Urn of Sacred Relics of the Saint kept in the Cathedral at Arles in France. The elegant interior of the church consists of a single nave containing the main altar and two side altars with two 17th century altarpieces by Pierangelo Basili and Federico Brunori and a beautiful Crucifix from the late 17th or early 18th century. Adorning the side walls of the church there are twenty small paintings representing scenes from the life of St. John the Baptist dating from the early years of the seventeenth century by artists from Gubbio.