SAN SEVERINO (anc. Septempeda)  , a town and episcopal see of the Marches, Italy, in the province of Macerata, from which it is 18 m . W. by S. by rail . Pop . (1901) 3227 (town); 14,932 (commune) . The lower town is situated 781 ft. above sea-level, and contains the new cathedral of S . Agostino, with a fine altar-piece by Pinturicchio (1489) . The Palazzo Comunale has some interesting pictures by artists of the Marches . Lorenzo and Giacomo Salimbeni da San Severino, who painted an important series of frescoes in the oratory of S . Giovanni Battista at Urbino in 1416, were natives of the town . So was also the later master Lorenzo di Maestro Alessandro, of the end of the 15th century, whose pictures are mainly to be found in the Marches . The old cathedral of S . Severino is in the upper town (1129 ft. above sea-level); it contains frescoes by the two Salimbeni, while an altar-piece by Niccolo Alunno of Foligno (1468) has been removed hence to the picture gallery .

The

ancient Septempeda lay r m. below the modern town, on the branch road which ran from Nuceria Camellaria, on the Via Flaminia; and here the road divided--one branch going to Ancona and the other through Tolentinum to Urbs Salvia and Firmum . No ruins of the old town exist, but a considerable number of inscriptions have been found, from which it may be gathered that it was a colonia .