San Rufino - Campanile and Facade

Image courtesy of Michael Reed

The campanile to the left of the façade stands on a Roman cistern.  (This cistern had been used in the same capacity in the earlier church, which stood in the present piazza so that its campanile was to the left of its apse).

The Romanesque façade of the present church was probably completed in the early 13th century.  It was beautifully restored after the 1997 earthquake.

The facade is divided into vertically into three, and horizontally into three storeys with a row of blind arches between the first two storeys.  Its design seems to have been significantly modified during construction:

• The outer bays in the second storey were probably originally roughly triangular. (This is almost certainly why the outer rose windows in these bays are set low down).

• The tympanum in the third storey probably originally lower, extending over only the central bay.

• The niche in the re-modelled tympanum was probably designed to take a mosaic, but this plan was never carried out.
  

Image© www.paradoxplace.com

The symbols of the Evangelists surround the fine central rose window, which is supported by three extraordinary figures standing on unidentifiable animals.

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All three portals are richly sculpted with geometric designs and figures of uncertain significance. Two lions, one eating a man and the other clutching a ram in its claws, guard the central portal.

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The red marble relief in its lunette, which may have come from the earlier church, depicts Christ enthroned beneath the moon and a star, with the Madonna del Latte to the left and a bishop, probably St Rufinus, to the right.

The two images above (of the portal and the lunette) come from:
A. Papi, "La Facciata Profetica del Duomo di San Rufino in Assisi", Episteme VI Part I, (2002),  which contains an interesting interpretation of the meaning of the reliefs on the facade. 

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