This singular fresco, dated 1446 and placed under the portico of the church of Averara and currently not fully legible, is a very rare example of an educational and formative tool adopted in the Middle Ages for the use of local communities who had no other form of knowledge of religious and moral principles.
The painting is at a craft level, but the tower is undoubtedly important for the religious history of the valley: it is a sort of catechism, imparted by means of short maxims and exhortations in Latin (honour your elders, be sober, reject lust, etc.), written on the bricks that make up the tower.
At a time when famine, pestilence and violence were constantly in ambush, the only hope was the Christian one and the illiterate people approached painting as the "bible of the poor", told and explained through figures and episodes from the life of Christ, the Virgin Mary and the Saints.
Under the portico, the faithful crowded together, intrigued by the novelty of this unusual fresco made up of a series of columns, capitals, bricks, spires and boxes: a labyrinth of words in Latin, which made up the design of the Tower and accompanied the faithful towards the highest levels of Christian life.
Italian