The Place
To enter Nun is to inhabit twenty centuries. The project began as the conservative restoration of a thirteenth-century monastery in the heart of Assisi, already a dialogue between old and new. But something older slept beneath the foundations: a Roman temple of the waters, its pillars still standing, in silence, for two thousand years. The discovery made the project rarer, and more necessary: to build around those centuries a place where one stops.
The Monastery
The thirteenth-century walls mark the line between the city and Nun. You enter through a hidden door. The cloister welcomes, the corridors guide. The stone tells of every passage, every transformation, every choice made by those who lived here before us.
The Common Spaces
Where prayer once happened, today one pauses. Nun's halls keep generous volumes, natural light, proportions that invite stillness. The contemporary furnishings do not fill the rooms: they let the space speak.
The Garden
Olive trees, pale stone, the line of the valley. Nun's garden is the point where the monastery breathes outward. A space at once open and protected, where the Umbrian landscape enters without asking.
Where stone meets the Roman ruins, the sacred and the contemporary stand together.
The Roman Spa and the Monastery. Over two thousand years of history.
In 2007, during the renovation of the Santa Caterina complex, excavations brought to light a monumental area in three distinct phases, from the second century BC to the first half of the first century AD. A sacred area tied to the cult of the waters, a system of perfectly preserved Roman cisterns, and the remains of the Roman amphitheater of Asisium. All beneath the floor of the medieval convent.
The Discovery
The excavations began in 2007, during the renovation of the Santa Caterina complex. The southeast front of the Roman amphitheater was thought to lie nearby. The perimeter of the convent, with its curved line, traced the elliptical plan of the ancient building. What emerged exceeded every expectation. Beneath the medieval cloister, a Roman monumental area surfaced, with structures from three distinct phases, a complex hydraulic system, and the remains of a sacred area.
The Choice: Integrate, Not Separate
The discovery of the remains brought a less obvious design choice. The Nun project, developed under the supervision of the Soprintendenza ai Beni Archeologici dell'Umbria, took a different path from museum display at a distance. The remains were folded directly into the spaces of the spa.
The amphitheater's pillars are reflected in the pools of the Spa. The ritual basin from the second century BC is visible and accessible. The Roman cisterns, with their original barrel vaults and cocciopesto floors, are the treatment rooms. The retaining walls from the first century BC line the corridor leading to the beauty area, still leaning slightly toward the valley from the pressure of the earth coming down from the hill of the Rocca Minore.
Three Phases, Two Thousand Years
You go down, and you go back. Each level is a century, each wall a chapter. Three building phases, layered and interwoven, that show how this place has never stopped being inhabited.
The Sacred Area and the Cult of the Waters
Late 2nd to early 1st century BC.
The oldest presence is a stairway with a monumental podium, likely the access to a sanctuary tied to the sacredness of the waters. Beside it, a ritual basin in molded stone, shallow, designed to hold only a thin veil of water. A channel connected the sacred area to the later hydraulic system. The continuity of water passes through all three phases of the complex.
The Roman Cisterns
1st century BC.
In the course of the first century BC, the area was reshaped by a major work of hydraulic engineering. A long wall in opus vittatum, built in small blocks of white and pink local limestone, survives for roughly five meters in height and extends for twenty-two meters, crossing one of the amphitheater pillars. The heart of this phase is two large cisterns covered by barrel vaults in Roman concrete. The brick walls are coated with watertight cocciopesto, the original floors still intact. The cisterns were linked by an inspection door and a leveling hole for the passage of water. Today they hold the ritual rooms of the spa.
The Roman Amphitheater of Asisium
First half of the 1st century AD.
The amphitheater measured roughly 180 by 80 meters, with an arena of 63 by 37.80. A building of considerable scale for an Umbrian provincial city. The excavations brought to light seven first-order pillars in large blocks of local limestone, laid dry. Five were found still standing, preserved to more than five meters in height. Connected to the amphitheater, a passable underground corridor identified by the Soprintendenza as a via tecta, the service passage for gladiators and beasts.
From Collapse to Monastery
13th century.
An earthquake destroyed the amphitheater, probably when the building had already been abandoned for centuries. On the rubble, following the line of the ellipse, the medieval houses and the Santa Caterina complex were built, founded in the second half of the thirteenth century. The monastery's substructures rest directly on the Roman pillars left standing.
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