San Matteo e San Marco in Lamis: The city's history is intertwined with that of the sanctuary of St. Matthew, whose building at first glance can be mistaken for an ancient fortress, but in reality is a Capuchin monastery dating from the ninth- X century. In the Middle Ages the imposing structure ensures protection to the inhabitants of the place, for its impregnable position, perched on a hill.
The old town named Padula (swamp) (Lamis in Latin equivalent to their swamp) is a medieval, with low houses terraced predominantly white with narrow streets and blind alleys.
Beautiful is the description that has made Bacchelli in his novel The Robber of Wolf's Tacca: ""As a cross between green barren hills, it opened, cool dawn, the valley where the throng San Marco in Lamis, individual countries for the distribution rules of the road on either side of the highway, so the red, vivid file gabled roofs alike, also houses the same height and size, align and share out like a brick floor to plug..."
Places of Interest: On the Via Sacra Langobardorum, are behind the country's two Franciscan monasteries of San Mateo and Santa Maria di Stignano, whose history is intimately linked to that of sammarchesi and their city.
The convent of San Matteo was built by the Benedictines in the ninth and tenth century on an earlier hospitium and has risen to the peak around the year 1000. After ups and downs in the sixteenth century saw the advent of the Franciscan friars who made it as well as a center of worship and study, also a point of reference for economic and social activities in the area. During the 1800 first suffered the restrictions imposed by the French and then by the Italian Government Unit with its suppressive laws of Religious Orders.
But the patient and tireless hard work of the Franciscan revival did the ancient splendor of the convent is in the structure of the imposing building in the heat of the popular cult.
Today in the twenty-first century, perched on a solid rock to dominate the valley below, which rises in San Marco in Lamis, it is sensitive to people as a beacon to guide and admonish. Goal of many faithful and pilgrims, is also a reference point for the many scholars who have the opportunity to benefit from his massive library (over 70,000 volumes, with an ancient collection, which includes books printed between the end of the century. XV and eighteenth century, and, among other things, 10 incunabula, 200 sixteenth seicentine and 1000). Inside the monastery are kept more than 600 ex-votos.
Source: Wikipedia
