Il Complesso di San Francesco Ad Alto a Capodimonte. Storia, architettura, restauri del primo insediamento francescano in Ancona,

The complex of St. Francesco ad Alto up the Capodimonte hill in Ancona, with its almost eight centuries of life, is one of the oldest ecclesial foundations in Ancona, which a consolidated tradition assigns to the personal will of the saint of Assisi. Time and history have not been clement with this prestigious monument, which has been martyred by heavy devastations, especially during Napoleonic occupation and most after the Italian Unity, with the suppression of religious orders and the consequent transformations of use to hospital military, barracks, and so on. The church, which was the subject of extensive worship for the work of Blessed Gabriele Ferretti in fifteenth century, to whose building was always ideally linked, was enriched in the time of prestigious works of art, just remember the paintings of Titian or Carlo Crivelli or the sculptural works of the Dalmatian masters of the fifteenth century, partly recovered today in the municipal collections. The latest story has seen the complex, and the church in particular, losing its original configuration, dispersed in the obvious needs of military functions; but perhaps in the near future, its desirable dismantling of the Ministry of Defense could open up hopes for its accurate recovery to the original image as much as possible, and its competent architectural restoration operated on a scientific basis that makes it less perceptible to typological memory of the complex and above all of the church, now battered by intermediaries and by archival use.