Conegliano Cathedral and Sala dei Battuti Site Features

The arrangement is the interesting part. The portico along Via XX Settembre carries a frescoed facade that belongs to the confraternity, not the church, and the cathedral sits behind it -- so the building most people photograph is not the one they think.

The interior is a plain fourteenth-century preaching hall, wide and aisleless, with a timber roof. It was given a Baroque overlay later and partly stripped back since, so it reads as older in some bays than others.

The Sala dei Battuti, upstairs over the portico, is the opposite: a small rectangular room whose every surface -- walls and ceiling -- carries sixteenth-century fresco. Complete decorated interiors of this kind rarely survived, and this one did because it was a private confraternity room rather than a public church.

Cima's altarpiece

The 1493 Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints, in its original position -- with the hills behind the figures recognisably the ones outside.

The Sala dei Battuti

A complete sixteenth-century fresco cycle covering an entire small room.

The hidden facade

The frescoed front on the street belongs to the confraternity; the cathedral has none of its own.

The portico

Part of Via XX Settembre's continuous arcade, so the church is entered from a covered walkway.

The cathedral sits halfway along Via XX Settembre, in the middle of the historic centre, with the castle hill rising directly behind it.