| The crypt of Our Lady of Consolation (Madonna della Consolazione) is in the centre of the town of San Cassiano.
Dug out of the limestone bank in the high Medieval period, today it seems to have been readapted, through a great number of renovations, to the needs of more modern worshippers.
You can now access the crypt through an entrance built in the 16th century, which partly damaged the original structure.
The rectangular church is divided up into three separate naves which end in three apses, one of which has been destroyed.
Signs of internal rebuilding work in the centuries that followed the medieval period are to be found in the Latin altar, placed in the right apse, a niche that has been carved out next to the original door and the baroque altar in the right hand nave.
Little remains of the original Byzantine style frescoes which adorned the walls.
The oldest pictures are in the left hand nave: in the first niche there is a Virgin with Child and Saint Lucy; in the second San Teodoro on a horse with a spear in his hand.
Both frescoes date back to the 13th century.
The pictures in the small 16th century altar on the right are from a later period, here you can see The Annunciation, and in the baroque altar a Virgin with Child.
Inside the right hand apse there is a late 16th century triptych where you can see the Throned Virgin with Child in the act of a Greek benediction.
To the right of the Virgin is a Saint with Child, perhaps Saint Anna, and to the left Saint Caterina with a palm and a wheel, symbol of the instrument with which the Saint was martyred.
A man and a woman are kneeling at the Virgin’s feet, dressed in 16th century attire.
It is likely that these two figures represent the baron Giovanni Francesco Santabarbara and his wife Giuditta, who bought the fief of San Cassiano in 1591.
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