Santa Maria di Monteluce, Gothic church and former monastery in Perugia, Italy.

Santa Maria di Monteluce is a church and former convent in Perugia featuring a distinctive pink and white marble facade completed in 1451 and decorated wooden doors at its double entrance. Inside, you find extensive painted walls from the 1600s that cover much of the interior with religious scenes and figures.

The church and convent were founded in 1218, when Count Glotto Monaldo gave land to house women drawn to the Franciscan ideal; Bishop Giovanni of Perugia authorised construction that year, and Cardinal Ugolino di Anagni, later Gregory IX, legitimised the monastery in 1219 as a community of Poor Clares. Donations made it Perugia's richest female monastery in the 16th to 18th centuries. Monastic life ended in 1910, when the new Santa Maria della Misericordia hospital was built here; the nuns moved to Sant'Erminio and the church became a parish.

The 15 August feast of the Assumption was long celebrated with the Fiera di Monteluce, a fair held outside the church; the festivities were revived in recent years. The square in front now bears the name of Cecilia Coppoli, the last abbess of Monteluce.

The site is centrally located in Perugia and easy to reach, functioning as an active parish church that opens regularly for worship. Plan your visit around religious services, as these may affect when you can explore the interior freely.

The old nuns' choir, reached from behind the presbytery, is a Gothic hall with ribbed vaults. Its long wall carries 14th-century votive frescoes: the Stigmata of Saint Francis, Saint Onophrius, Saint Michael, the Baptism of Christ and four scenes of Saint Catherine. A 17th-century Flagellation and Mocking of Christ face them.