In the square of the same name, at the end of the present-day Via Gramsci, the ancient merchants’ district, stands the former Church of St. Domenico with an adjoining convent.
The building dates back to 1285, according to a seventeenth-century inscription of an epigraph on the façade of the church. However, due to its poor state of preservation, today the date is no longer clearly visible and historical sources seem to credit the hypothesis that the church could have been built a century later, at the end of the 14th century.
The main entrance consists of an imposing ogee arched door that opens onto the single nave with a wooden truss roof, typical of the Mendicant Orders.
The value of the building is due to the richness of the pictorial decorations inside: more than fifty figures, some difficult or impossible to identify, animate the side walls of the entire room and are some of the most significant examples of 14th and 15th century painting of central Italy.
Among the most beautiful depictions are the “Martyrdom of St. Sebastian” and the “Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine“. From the stylistic characteristics, scholars have believed that they can recognize in the cycle of frescoes the hands of many local artists such as Alunno, Bartolomeo di Tommaso and Giovanni di Corraduccio.
In modern times – since the end of the twentieth century- the architectural complex has lost its religious function, becoming the property of the Foligno municipality, which has transformed the former convent into an auditorium. The Umbrian architect Franco Antonelli was responsible for the functional and partly structural transformation, but he was not able to conclude the work according to the project by his studio Antonelli e Associates.