Chiesa di San Rocco

Beautiful little churches, it gives off kindness

Beautiful square, a must for visitors to Spilimbergo, a crossroads between shops, bars and the beautiful white church

Left to itself, it would need restructuring, but the Vatican "curia" thinks of getting rich and that's it.

The clock of the tower is inversely put

In 1533 on Spilimbergo, a pestilence took place which caused the death of 450 people in just three months. The population gathered for a vote to the Madonna and San Rocco in order to free the spilimberghesi from the plague through the construction of a church in their honor. Tradition in fact wants that San Rocco, during the return to France from a pilgrimage, finding a city devastated by the plague, has comforted the plague victims and has healed them by placing on their foreheads the sign of the cross; then continuing his journey he realized that he had been infected by the disease and, in order not to spread the evil, he took refuge in a wood. Here an angel consoled him and healed him, while a dog brought him a loaf of bread every day. San Rocco then embodied the specific thaumaturgist for the plague and in this sense took the place of St. Sebastian in popular devotion. The church of San Rocco was finished in 1536. The building was very simple: rectangular plan and unique altar, completed with the representations of San Rocco (made by Gaspare Narvesa) and Floriano (saint invoked against epidemic diseases especially in Friuli) and with the Virgin of Health placed at the top. In 1883 the church was equipped with the bell tower, while the external portico was demolished shortly thereafter. During the First World War it was requisitioned like the other churches and used as a warehouse; in 1922 it was finally restored. Inside there is also an altar piece by Umberto Martina from 1922 and three stained glass windows with the Annunciation and San Rocco (2001). In the spilimberghese social tradition, San Rocco has always been the popular church par excellence; while the Duomo was the church of the counts and San Pantaleone (dei Frati) was that of the good families.