Church of Saint Anthony of Padua

The church of Sant’Antonio da Padova (in all twelve meters of surface: 3.10 meters wide and 4.00 meters long) is the first place of worship that appears to those who go up from the Nevola valley, almost at the entrance of Corinaldo. The corinaldese Tiberio Ciaffoni commissioned the construction in 1652 in a land he owned. Inside it lie the same Ciaffoni and other devotees to the Saint. On 18 February 1707, with a specific notarial deed, Maria Antonia Nobili in Clementi, for her ancestors and posterity made a gift to the church of a possession with a house in the district of Pregiagna and another small plot of land nearby, with a house adjacent to the church. The same Mobili left to the sons of Pietro Giuseppe Cesarini di Corinaldo the faculty of appointing the chaplain or rector of the church of Sant’Antonio with a fee of 14 scudi and the obligation of three weekly masses in suffrage of the deceased family and ten masses in the feast of the Saint. In an inventory of 1750 the church is described with a single altar, where in the middle of a niche there is a statue of said saint and on the sides of that altar there is a statue of the Madonna Santissima and on the other side the Angel painted in cardboard announcing the Madonna. The church, an important reminder for the popular religiosity of past centuries was officiated until the middle of the last century. Moreover, its particular position marked an obligatory stopping point, according to the older people. Here, in fact, the thrifty farmers who came from the Nevola valley to the village stopped to wear the shoes they had kept in the bag and so prepare, with a deep sense of dignity to enter the village.