ORBETELLO SUMMER OF 2021 WALKING TOUR with captions 4K
The tour starts by visiting the three ancient gates of the city. This is "Porta del Soccorso" The Porta del Soccorso, built in 1620, takes its name from an event dating back to the siege of Orbetello in 1646 by the Franks-Piedmontese. The remains of the gate, still preserved in height, overlook the western lagoon. Before continuing our tour I would like to point out this restaurant "I Pescatori" a typical restaurant that offers the typical products of the lagoon Here you can taste the fish of the lagoon (sea bass, sea bream, eel) cooked on the grill and other local gastronomic specialties Porta Medina is a monumental door in Baroque style. For all those who docked from the western lagoon it was the obligatory passage, closed by a drawbridge and guarded by a guardhouse. Porta Nuova is one of the largest, it is made up of three round arches. On the facade of the central arch that faced the outside of the city there are 4 marble coats of arms.
The slab that is found between the coat of arms located higher and those placed lower comes from the Porta del Soccorso. Porta Nuova seen from Piazza Cortesini. A little further to the right is the old entrance to the "A. Brunetta" airport. The Orbetello seaplane base, named in memory of "Agostino Brunetta", midshipman aviator, is an airport structure built at the beginning of the twentieth century as a military airport . It is still known all over the world today for having been linked to the aviation companies conducted in the 1930s by Italo Balbo. Idroscalo is no longer active.
Next to the airport there is this staircase leading to a raised garden from the road from where you can observe what remains of the former seaplane base in the east (the real military seaplane base former) now are still visible: the field football which, having no changing rooms or stands, is used only as a secondary training ground for the local football team; some structures that were annexed to the hangars adapted to house the sailing and rowing club, managed by the “Società Canottieri Orbetello”, the remains of one of the two Hangars built by P. Nervi are still visible in the square; at the entrance of the secondary gate a bar is housed in the structure that was once the infirmary still in excellent condition. Next to it stands the bowling club on the base of the former canteen. Other structures are present but in precarious conditions including the command building which could be recovered. Another smaller building once used as accommodation for officers, which is in a good state of conservation, is still present at the secondary entrance of the Cruise Park.
No tourist guide will tell you about this avenue bordered by pine trees, but I assure you that it is worth taking a walk. Orbetello tennis club La Polveriera Guzman is a historic building located in Orbetello on the eastern lagoon. The structure, built by the Spaniards in 1692, was used as a large powder magazine that contained tons of explosives. In 1860, Giuseppe Garibaldi reached Orbetello after having landed in Talamone, and supplied himself with ammunition in the powder keg for the expedition of the Thousand. Eleven Orbetellani then offered to follow him in the enterprise. The structure has recently been well restored and currently houses the Archaeological Museum of Orbetello.
Inside the powder magazine there is the municipal archaeological collection, rich in jewelry, bucchero and stone tools, which cover a chronological period from the Villanovan to the Roman age. The collection is completed by materials from the Orbetello area. Via Mura di levante with the Etruscan walls on the left and the Guzman powder magazine at the bottom The structure, with a stone roof, was equipped with four obelisks placed in front of the windows to protect the explosive contents from gunfire. If you have the opportunity, do not miss a walk on this platform suspended over the water. You will feel like you are "walking on water".
At the end of the platform you will find yourself on this small road which, turning left, will take you to the city center. Our tour after a short walk resumes from Porta Nuova. In the internal part of the Porta Nuova it is possible to observe the bust of San Biagio, protector of Orbetello, and another marble slab dedicated to Charles II of Spain. The gate, in addition to the guardhouse, also contained barracks and warehouses. In Corso Italia, the main street of Orbetello, you will find shops for shopping, restaurants, ice cream parlors and local craft shops. Facade of the church of San Giuseppe in Orbetello. The original sixteenth-century structure has been greatly remodeled over the centuries. In the interior with a single hall stands the elaborate eighteenth-century high altar, in plaster and stucco, which in the remenate presents the contemporary mural painting with "Angels in adoration of the monstrance", while in the central part, following the loss of the original furnishings , a mosaic with the "Death of St. Joseph" has been inserted in a modern way.
Interesting is the powerful eighteenth-century wooden statue of the "Immaculate Conception", a very repainted work, belonging to a probably Neapolitan manufacture with a popular stamp. Piazza del Plebiscito with the seat of the municipality of Orbetello and in the center of the square the war memorial The church of San Francesco da Paola. The construction of the church and convent, which no longer exists, dates back to the 16th century as the seat of the minimum tertiaries of San Francesco di Paola. In the seventeenth century the convent was of considerable importance, as can be seen from the tombstones of the commanders and governors of the State of the Presidii, and at the time of the siege of Orbetello (1648) it played an important defensive role.
The building, altered by radical modern renovations, retains the ancient facade with Spanish-like forms; in the single nave interior the tombstones have been placed along the left side. On the main altar, a seventeenth-century altarpiece attributable to Andrea Commodi with the Apparition of the Annunciation to San Francesco di Paola and San Biagio. Walk at sunset on the Ponente Lagoon The Co-Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta constitutes the cathedral of Orbetello and is the main church in the municipal area. Probably built on the ruins of a Roman temple of the fifth century AD, there is news of an expansion of the building in 1201, and substantial rebuilding works were carried out between 1370 and 1376 at the behest of the Orsini. In 1582 it was erected as a collegiate church by Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, while in the following century it was enlarged again with the addition of the two aisles and the dome of the chapel of San Biagio and with the insertion of the late Gothic facade in another dimension. major.
The construction of the bell tower in neo-Gothic style dates back to 1898. In 1981 it was elevated to the co-cathedral of the diocese of Pitigliano-Sovana-Orbetello. Inside there are interesting works of art such as the eighteenth-century canvas of the Circumcision, inspired by Apollonio Nasini; the Assumption of the Madonna, made in 1801 for the king of Naples; the nineteenth-century tempera painting with the Madonna enthroned among angels against the backdrop of the Orbetello lagoon; the copper squares with the mysteries of the Rosary by Francesco Nasini. Confessional where St. Paul of the cross listened to penitents. To the left of the presbytery there is the neoclassical chapel of the Blessed Sacrament, which has a very fragmentary and ruined mural painting of the Assumption of the Madonna in the dome. In the altars on the left side there are two eighteenth-century pictorial works, the Circumcision, dated 1741, and the fifteen squares on copper with the Mysteries of the Rosary.
In the right aisle there is the chapel dedicated to San Biagio, the most important sacred space in the city. The chapel, built between the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth century, according to graceful late Baroque stylistic features, houses the saint's head within the valuable reliquary bust in embossed and chiseled silver by the Roman goldsmith Cesare Aureli (1893). The square-shaped room is surmounted by a dome divided by four ribs in sails where windows with shaped frames and decorated in stucco with angelic heads and palms of martyrdom open. Particularly elaborate is the broken tympanum altar with the bust of San Biagio in the center in a relief panel. On the sides of the altar, two refined built-in wardrobes intended to contain the relics; in the side walls, two stucco frames enclosed the canvases which, together with that of the altar, were destroyed during the fire of 1974. Madonna and Child between Saints Peter and Paul In the last bay of the right aisle there is the organ with reeds, built by the Costamagna company in 1950, with 8 registers on two manuals and pedal. The frontal of the main altar consists of an interesting early medieval marble slab, found in 1964; it is a rare artefact carved in relief with a grid system of twenty-four panels decorated with plant, zoomorphic and geometric elements with a symbolic meaning.
2021-08-23 21:44
