SCARZUOLA

La Scarzuola is a rural village in Umbria, located in the Montegiove hamlet of the municipality of Montegabbione in the province of Terni. It is well known for the ancient convent where, according to tradition, St. Francis of Assisi would have lived, and for the city-theater, conceived and built in the twentieth century by the Milanese architect Tomaso Buzzi as personal interpretation of the theme of the "ideal city" . The locality is mentioned in medieval chronicles to be the one in which, in 1218, St. Francis built a hut where he had planted a rose and a laurel and from which a fountain had miraculously gushed out. The hut was built with a marsh plant named Scarza, from which derives the name Scarzuola. Subsequently, to remember the event, the Counts of Marsciano built a church there and then a convent, both entrusted to the Friars Minor, who remained there until the late eighteenth century, when they took possession of the Marquises Misciatelli of Orvieto.