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If you arrive in Todi coming from Pontecuti - that is the bridge on the River Tevere - you find suddenly in front of you the splendid church of the Consolation.
St. Mary of Consolation was built over the place where in earlier times was venerated a miraculous "Madonna with Child": the fresco, commissioned by a benedectine monk on his return from the Holy Land, was later forgotten and abandoned in the bushes; the legend tells that one day it was discovered by a bricklayer blind in one eye, and that the man wiping his forehead with the handkerchief used to clean the image returned to see with the two eyes.
The construction of the foundations began in November 1508; the church is a Renaissance building with a central plan, graceful and harmonious: plausible the thesis that Bramante contributed to the project; anyway the works were directed by many persons - Cola di Matteuccio, Ambrogio da Milano, Francesco da Vita Lombardo.
The structure is in the form of a Greek Cross, with three polygonal apses and a semicircular one, surmonted by a base on which is placed the fine dome.
The interior is majestic and full of light, thanks to the large windows; baroque altars hid the original and simplier ones; a series of statues of the Apostles are placed in the niches, and the very big one of Pope Martino I was placed in the church after the terrible pestilence of 1630.
The temple of St. Mary of Consolation represents a decisive change as regards the past: it is a synthesis-monument of the Renaissance civilization placed in a town still medieval, result of the élite culture of the people committing it.
In St. Fortune God goes down to bring his light, in the Consolation the human reason elevates to reach the divine one.
Going further from the town we arrive at the Convent Complex of Montesanto, a rectangular building, a fortress more than a convent.
In 1235 Friar Ruggero da Todi obtained from the Commune permission to install there a community of Poor Clares; in the middle of the 15th century the Clares moved elsewhere, and in Montesanto settled the Friars Minor: the convent became one of the most important Franciscan centres in the region.
Going to Ponte Rio we find the Church of the Crucified: begun in 1591 by Martelli, it had to have a circular plan with portico, like San Pietro in Montorio by Bramante (Rome); instead it was built in the form of a Greek Cross, and it was finished by Ippolito Scalza.
Also this church, like the Consolation, is the result of the humanistic culture which wants the temple situated in an open space to exalt the rationality of the architecture lines.
Its building was very tormented, sign of no solved problems between old and new ideas.