Church of San Liberatore

The church of San Liberatore or cathedral of the Sabines is the cathedral of Magliano Sabina and co-cathedral of the diocese of Sabina-Poggio Mirteto. The church is already attested in the 14th century, but it assumed greater importance first in 1459 when Pope Pius II declared it a collegiate church, and then on 18 September 1495 when Pope Alexander VI elevated it to the dignity of cathedral of the Sabine diocese, transferring its seat from Bishop. (today a hamlet of Torri in Sabina) in Magliano. But today very little remains of the ancient fourteenth-century church, due to the renovations of the seventeenth century, commissioned and financed by Cardinal Annibale Albani and carried out in the late Baroque style between 1730 and 1743 by architects Filippo Barigioni and Pietro Paolo Alfieri.

The facade is an eighteenth-century work by Alfieri, built in 1735. However, it is said that the design is attributable to Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola.

The interior of the building has three naves with a presbytery covered by a barrel vault. In the left aisle there are three side chapels and the baptistery, while a fourth chapel is located at the end of the nave: the chapels are dedicated to St. Gregory the Great, St. Anthony of Padua, the Pietà and the Blessed Sacrament. In the right aisle, instead, in concave niches there are four altars, dedicated to San Rocco, to the saints Quattro Coronati, to San Domenico and to the Nativity scene. The chapels and altars are decorated with 16th-17th-century canvases from the presbytery, with the rear apse, it was decorated in 1737; in the apse there is a fresco depicting the Assumption of the Virgin with Saints by Giovanni Domenico Piestrini.

The church is full of painted panels, among which that of the Holy Savior stands out, called “Pala Falconi”, due to the family crest that ordered it, it is attributed to a certain Master of Narni from 1409. Another interesting altarpiece is that by Rinaldo Jacovetti from Calvi dell’Umbria which represents the Coronation of the Virgin with a predella that tells the Miracle of the Madonna of Uliano.