Biselli

To be visited

Localita: Biselli

The Castle, part of the municipality of Norcia and located at 555 m a.s.l., was built in the 13th century.  The triangular planimetric scheme, very frequent in hillside cast-les, is anomalous here due to the impervious morphology of the place: the tower is located on the most prominent point, but the nucleus that coincides with the acute angle, a spur jutting out over the Corno valley, is robustly fortified as well.
Having lost its control function on the valley floor and because of damage due to recurring seismic events (1979, 1980 and 2016), the village gradually became de-populated and is now almost completely abandoned. Nonetheless, except for some sections, it is still fairly well preserved and a good stretch of the wall with the forti-fied elements is still standing.
The houses, once permanently inhabited, were later used as summer homes, ma-king the village come to life again with games and entertainment initiatives.  
Today the buildings are reduced to ruins, gradually and inexorably covered by vege-tation, reached with difficulty via an impervious road.  Three churches remain: just outside the walls stands the semi-ruined Santa Maria della Porta, within the village there is the church of San Leonardo and, near the cemetery, San Martino.

CHURCH OF SANTA MARIA DELLA PORTA
The Church of Santa Maria della Porta, or Santa Maria Nuova, was created inside some houses aligned along the road that descended from the entrance to the cast-le. Today only the two side entrances and the bell gable barely show its 16th century structure.  The church interior is barrel vaulted, shaped like a sort of corridor parallel to the external street.
The "schiazze" floor, a very small room open towards the rocky wall and the 17th century wooden altar (of which only the upper part survives) have been preserved; behind the latter we can see traces of the 16th century fresco decoration, still cove-red with lime: the Eternal, a Saint with a halo, scene of the flagellation of Christ; on the wall of the altar, a Madonna with Child is barely visible.
The church has been looted in all its parts, even the altar is damaged. It certainly suffered damage following the 1997 earthquake, but due to the abandonment of the town it had already been subject to theft and vandalism before.

CHURCH OF SAN LEONARDO
This was the parish church of the Castle: it has a simple elongated and plastered prospectus from the 1700-1800's, incorporated in a group of houses, with two win-dows and a lateral access door surmounted by a cross, dating back to the 16th cen-tury. The right corner of the church, on which a 16th century house rests, would ap-pear to be older.  The building is located entirely outside the old castle walls, except for the bell tower which is founded on a stretch of them.
The environment appears ravaged by depredations which not even the armor of the door could resist.  The interior, covered by a cross vault, is decorated with frescoes: S. Amico, the protector of woodcutters (first half of the 16th century); S. Urbano and S. Leonardo (17th century) on either side of the main altar.
There are also a tabernacle of the 18th century, a rich processional machine with a wooden Madonna (18th century) from the ruined church of the Madonna della Valle and numerous canvases, including a Madonna and Saints (Domenico Mazzolini, 17th century) in one of the rich wooden Baroque altars and S Francesco and S. Chiara (17th century), from the Poor Clares monastery of Norcia.