The church of Sant’Agata

The pretty church of Sant’Agata stands alone in Corniano, the ghost town, perhaps abandoned following reprisals from the Venetians (1440) or due to the Great Plague of 1630.

The antiquity of the Roman church (recent surveys speak of the Carolingian period) is testified by the stone font kept in the Museo Diocesano di Trento (Diocesan Museum of Trento) as a rare pre-Roman relic. The building has a gabled facade, small windows above the door in the apse and a massive cuspidate stone bell tower.

Within are the frescoes that conceal a fifteenth century cycle, that superimposed in turn the thirteenth century decor. On the right-hand wall the Last Supper is depicted, very worn and dated 1537, while on the left wall is a Madonna and saints. A curiosity: a passage from the Holy Gospel is written in Latin on a book held by one of the saints, not how to write but rather how to pronounce. Perhaps the text was dictated by the priest to a painter unaware of what he was writing!

On the rock wall that rises a short distance is a cave where according to popular tradition plague victims were isolated, fed with provisions that relatives threw from above.