Town Hall and Museum of popular terracotta

The current Town Hall was home to the ancient church of San Giacomo Maggiore and the convent of the Augustinian friars with its own church dedicated to Sant’Agostino and Santa Monica of which are visible, unfortunately, only a few parts of a fresco with a sweet face of Madonna, work of unknown author of the school of Marche active around 1430-40: the Virgin has in her arms the Child, with Saint John the Baptist and the face of San Donato (whose name is legible in Gothic characters in the frame above). The civic tower above dates back to 1572.

In 1652 the convent was suppressed by Pope Innocent X, who entrusted the building to the City and its maintenance to the brotherhood of SS. Sacramento.

Housed in the rooms below the civic tower, the Folk Museum of Terracotta, Pipes and Whistles offers a large collection of whistles, pipes and terracotta artifacts, whose art of processing represents the greatest tradition of craftsmanship in the country.

Conspicuous was in fact the presence, in the past, of workshops of terracotta artisans specialized in the production of vases, amphorae and other objects for common use (both practical and artistic and recreational)which were distributed in numerous fairs up to Ancona and the north of Abruzzo.

More generally, Massignano is traditionally known (like Ripatransone and Montottone, where some families of Massignano artisans moved) as ‘u village of the cucciaà.

Inside the museum you can admire the remains of the fresco of the Madonna and Child dating from the fifteenth century and coming from the church of Sant’Agostino and Santa Monica.