From the outside, it looks like any other New England church building — a boxy, white structure with a single steeple surrounded by an old stone wall, set against rolling hills and pine forest.

Inside, though, the South Solon Meeting House has a secret unknown even to some who drive through the tiny Maine town every day.

The interior of the building is covered in 70-year-old fresco murals that encourage some in Maine's art community to describe it as “Maine's Sistine Chapel”.

The murals were painted by student artists in the 1950s, and while they have long been appreciated by visitors, the recent launch of a website dedicated to them by Colby College students has generated new interest in the paintings.

Véronique Plesch, a professor of art at Colby, hopes the building inspires many more frescoes.

“I fell in love with the place, because I have studies frescoes all my life,” said Plesch, who is a member of the board of the historical society that cares for the meeting house. “It's not something that you put in museums, it's something that is put in public places.”

The meeting house was built in 1842 and hosted church services until the 1940s, though there were periods of closure, such as during times of war. A decade later, Margaret Day Blake — a graduate of the nearby Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture — found the building in a state of disrepair and put out a call for young artists to paint frescoes under the school's supervision in 1951.

The artists were given creative freedom — they were told there would be no limits to subject matter, but that Biblical scenes would “offer rich and suitable” imagery.

The interior was covered in such scenes from 1952 to 1956, and the walls remain adorned with frescoes, including one that references Leonardo da Vinci's 'The Last Supper'.

Another fresco depicts the binding of Isaac.

Two of the thirteen artists — Sigmund Abeles of New York City and Sidney Hurwitz of Newton, Massachusetts — both in their 90s, are still living. Both spoke fondly about their time at the meeting house.

“We would go out there and paint and then take a lunch break in the cemetery behind the building. It was a very idyllic time,” Hurwitz said. “I very much enjoyed it.”

Today, the meeting house — which is open to the public and does not have locks on its doors — serves as a community gathering and performance space. Many of its old features, including box pews made for smaller people of a different time, are still intact.

Abeles recalled painting the scene of Jacob wrestling with the angel from the Book of Genesis.

“It's a very, very special place, and it was a unique experience doing them,” Abeles said.

On a recent Sunday morning, Plesch gave a lecture at the meeting house before a group of members of the Maine Art Education Association as part of the group's spring conference.

Long ago, attendants of the building might have been preparing for an Easter service, but on this day it was full of teachers fascinated by the frescoes.

Suzanne Goulet, an art teacher at a nearby high school, said that she was previously aware of the frescoes, and confessed that she had also previously peaked into the windows of the old building.

"It's great that the paintings are still inspiring art lovers decades later," she said. “The inspiration is that we bring it back to our students.”