chiesa di S. Pietro Martire o della Confraternita di Santa Croce

This small oratory is wedged between the Dominican convent’s ‘cloister of the dead’ and the street, communicating with the latter through a handsome arched portal. Flanked by two pilasters supporting a curved tympanum, the doorway contains a terracotta figure of Saint Catherine. The portal opens onto a portico linking the church’s forecourt to the road. Within, the entrance to the little church lies beyond a section still covered by a sail vault.

The interior is a single nave with a simple barrel vault, decorated by pilasters supporting a light entablature. This deliberate austerity is pushed to its limit externally: the facade is utterly anonymous, marked only by the bell tower, whose openings shift from rectangular to arched to quatrefoil. Renaissance oratories in Italy were often modest, confraternal spaces, but few achieve such a rigorous economy of means. This is a church that speaks only through its essential forms, leaving ornament to the single terracotta saint who guards the threshold.

Description via source. Coordinates and heritage data from the Atika atlas.