Church of Santa Maria della Neve

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The octagonal chapel of Santa Maria della Neve, or Porta di Sotto, located inside Palazzo Vici, was built to honour a miraculous image of the Virgin Mary.

It contains an early Baroque altar with gilded stucco frames, depicting, among others, a saint in Franciscan robes, possibly Blessed Angela of Foligno and a bishop with a book in his left hand, possibly St. Thomas Becket.

Also present is the 'wheel of the exposed', a rotating wooden window where children were abandoned in the certainty that someone would take care of them. The wheel was a kind of social assistance for women from poor families who could not care for a newborn baby for various reasons: because they were unmarried or for economic or practical reasons as women from the poorer classes often had to work all day and did not have time to care for a newborn baby.