Wisdom Tower

This unique fresco, dated 1446 and placed under the porch 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 that had no other form of knowledge of religious and moral principles.
Painting is at the level of craftsmanship, but the tower has undoubted importance for the purpose of the religious history of the valley: it is a kind of catechism, imparted through short maxims and exhortations in Latin (honor 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 lurking, the only hope was Christian hope, and the illiterate people approached painting as the “poor man's bible,” told and explained through figures and episodes from the lives of Christ, Our Lady, and the saints.
Under the portico, the faithful crowded together intrigued by the novelty of that unusual fresco consisting of a series of columns, capitals, bricks, spires, and boxes: a labyrinth of Latin words that made up the design of the Tower and accompanied the faithful to the higher levels of Christian life.