Top of the World
The Chapel of St. Andrew the Apostle, also known as the aristocratic Oratory of Villa Manin, is one of the most characteristic churches in Friuli Venezia Giulia. Overlooking Piazza dei Dogi, the meeting place of the inhabitants of the small village of Passariano, the church dedicated to St. Andrew has an ancient history, closely intertwined with the dynastic and patronage of the Serenissima Manin, who built their residential complex in the village where they had intended to start in the seventeenth century the so-called "d'unione" the pivot of the political and economic life of the illustrious family. The interior is embellished with valuable sculptural works by the artist Giuseppe Torretti. Particularly noteworthy are the imposing sculptural reliefs that act as real altarpieces on the side walls of the church. The attentive traveller also admires the eighteenth-century grisailles (grisailles) by the painter Francesco Fontebasso depicting episodes of the Original Sin. At the sides of the presbytery two doors lead into the sacristy behind: the ambulatory on the left is flanked by a series of tombstones commemorating the representatives of the Manin family (Carlo Manin, Silvia Beretta, Giuseppina Manin, Giovanna Comaschi) buried inside the sacristy, including the last direct descendant, Count Giovanni, who died in 1997.
