Oratorio dei Bianchi

Just across from the church of Sant’Eufemia, the Oratorio dei Bianchi presents a facade that is less a single composition than a palimpsest of frescoes, painted and repainted from the late fifteenth to the seventeenth century. Among them, an early sixteenth-century Danza macabra, a memento mori in which skeletons lead the living in a grim dance, still holds its macabre power. The portal, carved from local beola stone in the seventeenth century, has elaborately sculpted jambs and lintel. To the right, an arch spans a narrow vicolo that drops down behind the oratorio, where residential houses press close. This is a small, layered building, its decoration speaking across centuries, its architecture shaped as much by the alleyways and dwellings that crowd around it as by any grand design.

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