1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/San Severino

SAN SEVERINO (anc. Septempeda), a town and episcopal see of the Marches, Italy, in the province of Macerata, from which it is 18 m. W. by S. by rail. Pop. (1901) 3227 (town); 14,932 (commune). The lower town is situated 781 ft. above sea-level, and contains the new cathedral of S. Agostino, with a fine altar-piece by Pinturicchio (1489). The Palazzo Comunale has some interesting pictures by artists of the Marches. Lorenzo and Giacomo Salimbeni da San Severino, who painted an important series of frescoes in the oratory of S. Giovanni Battista at Urbino in 1416, were natives of the town. So was also the later master Lorenzo di Maestro Alessandro, of the end of the 15th century, whose pictures are mainly to be found in the Marches. The old cathedral of S. Severino is in the upper town (1129 ft. above sea-level); it contains frescoes by the two Salimbeni, while an altar-piece by Niccolo Alunno of Foligno (1468) has been removed hence to the picture gallery. The ancient Septempeda lay 1 m. below the modern town, on the branch road which ran from Nuceria Camellaria, on the Via Flaminia; and here the road divided—one branch going to Ancona and the other through Tolentinum to Urbs Salvia and Firmum. No ruins of the old town exist, but a considerable number of inscriptions have been found, from which it may be gathered that it was a colonia.