Miscellaneous churches 4
 Santa Maria di
Montesanto is the final resting place of Alessandro Scarlatti, the great composer
of the Neapolitan Baroque.
The original foundation of a church in Naples built by Carmelite
fathers from Sicily was in 1640 on other premises, near the old San Bartolomeo theater, the original opera
house in Naples. That proved too noisy an environment for the order and
they moved to a new site at Montesanto, at the base of the San Martino
hill, in 1646. The architect of the church and adjacent monastery was
Pietro de Marino; the dome is by Dionisio Lazzari. It was finished in
1680.The church contains a bust of San Gaetano, invoked by the people as a protector from the great plague of 1656 and at the origin of a typically Neapolitan story. Farmers coming down to this church from the San Martino hill had to walk a ways along the outside of the city wall and come in through the major Royal Gate past the church of the Spirto Santo. Rather than do all that walking, they simply knocked a hole in the wall nearer to their church and came straight on in. The Spanish viceroy at the time, Ramiro Guzman, finally caved in and officialized the hole, calling upon the great architect, Cosimo Fanzago, to make it into a worthy gate. He did, after which it was called Porta Medina. To the people, it was Porta "Pertuso"—Neapolitan dialect for "hole". All the walls and gates in that area were eliminated in the 1870s, and the guardian bust of San Gaetano, mounted over "The Hole" was moved into the church.  San Nicola alla
Carità is on Via Toldeo amidst a number of other
churches and monasteries built as the Spanish
expanded the city to the north along their new thoroughfare named for
the great viceroy, Don Pedro de Toledo. In
the early 1600s, the fathers of the Pii
Operai order were concerned with caring for the sick in that
area. In 1646, one of them,
a Swiss named Giovan Battista Burgo, left the group enough money to buy
the original building on the site; a small church was built on the
premises in 1647. It was under expansion in 1656 when the great plague
of that
year broke out. Construction was halted and then restarted and finished
by 1716. The order was surpressed by Murat
and the premises given over
to military use. The religious order was restored in 1819 and the
church redone in 1843. The facade was designed by the great painter of
the Neapolitan Baroque, Francesco Solimena.
The interior of the church
also contains his Storia di San
Nicola. Chapel of San Giovanni di Pappacoda is in
the heart of the
historic center of Naples, one block east of the major road, via
Mezzocannone, in the university district. It is across from the "Orientale" university of Naples in the
square of San Giovanni Maggiore.
The chapel was founded in 1415 by Artusio
Pappacoda, a
nobleman of the Angevin court. The chapel was redone in the 1770s and
little remains of the original late-Gothic frescoes and ornamentation
within the chapel, itself. The ornamental main portal is the work of Antonio Baboccio di Piperno, He was a goldsmith, architect and sculptor. (Since his name, Piperno, is also the name of one of the most used kinds of rock used in building—"peperino" in English—used in building, one is tempted to think that his surname was derived from his craft (such as "Smith" or "Cartwright"). He is well known for his work on the cathderals of Milan, Naples, and Messina, as well as works in France; he was one of the pirmary "cathedral builders" of the Angevin dynasty in France and Italy. Not seen in this photo is the small Gothic belfry on the north-east corner of the chapel. It, too, is by Piperno and was retained during the 18th-century restoration.  Santa Maria alla
Carità. Like many of the other churches along via Toledo
(aka via Roma), the small church of Sant
Maria alla Carità with
an adjacent monastrery was established as a "conservatory"—that is, a
shelter for destitute and sick women—in the mid-1500s. Interestingly,
this was the beginning of the new age of larger hospitals in Naples,
which fact diminished the need for smaller institutions such as Santa Maria alla
Carità. The benevolent "conservatory," thus, was
not financially able to support itself.
The monastery was closed and reopened various times under
various circumstances. The church, itself, was given to the
confraternity of the Bianchi del
Rosario in 1823; they remodelled it completely, giving the
facade the appearance that it has to this day. The church is remembered
for the visit of Pope Pius iX in 1848 as well as for the fact the
premises hold a number of important documents relating to the lives of
prominent Neapolitan artists of the 1600s, such as Battistello and
Cavallino. San Vitale is in
Fuorigrotta, a western suburb of Naples, on the other side of
the Posillipo hill. As early as 985 a.d. there is documentation
of a church dedicated to Saint Vitalis (see Regii
Neapolitani Archivi Monumenta, 11, The well-known San Vitale church in Fuorigrotta that was simply called "the church"—it went without saying— goes back to the 1300s and was one of the most sacred and revered houses of worship in the area. That lasted until the 1930s when Mussolini's mega-builders—to the horror of the local population—decided to tear it down to make room for a broad new street to the brand new Mostra d'Oltemare, the overseas fairgrounds. The new church of San Vitale (photo), thus, is not really that old. It contains art and ornamentation from the original church and, most importantly, a plaque that informs you that this—from 1837 until 1939 (when the original church was demolished) was where the tomb of the greatest of all Italian Romantic poets, Giacomo Leopardi, was to be found. (When the demolition came, Leopardi's tomb was moved to the reputed final resting place of another poet, Virgil.)  Santa Maria degli Angeli a Pizzofalcone. In spite
of the surrounding urban sprawl that has encroached upon this church
since it was finished in 1610, it is still easy to see from many spots
in the western part of the city. In those days, if you walked out
the front door of the church and turned right, you would within a few
minutes be at the
Pizzofalcone cliff overlooking the bay and the Egg Castle (Castel dell'Ovo). The property
had originally (1587) been given to the Theatine order by Costanza del
Carretto, d'Oria, princess of Melfi. The interior of the church is
perfectly rectangular and is so strikingly symmetruical in the postions
of the naves, transept and apse that an early comment on the structure
was that it was "best-proportioned church in Naples." The church
contains significant art from the 1600s and 1700s. Also, some damgae
done to the structure in WWII has been repaired. The Theatine monastic
order was surpressed (as were all religious orders) by the government
of Murat in
1808, and though the church remained open, the gardens and the
monastery, itself, were taken over for
other purposes. Today, for example, one part of the old monastery is
now a military court-room; another has been incorporated into the
adjacent Politeama , one of the most popular venues in Naples for
plays and musical theater.
 The church of Sant' Antonio Abate
has
an important place in the urban development of the city. It is located
at the eastern end of via Forio, the long street that runs from the National Museum all the way to the
other end of what was once the
entire city of Naples. That area was below the entire northen wall of
the city as it existed until the Spanish
expanded it in the 1500s. The
path of modern via Foria was actually a small river, fed partially by
rain run-off from the heights of the city. Along that path and just
outside the walls there grew up a number of church-run hospitals of
which Sant'Antonio Abate was
one. It is
mentioned as early as the year 1313. The religious order, itself, is
called the Antonines or the Hospital Brothers of St. Anthony;
it was founded in 1090 for the specific purpose of caring for the sick
and, more precisely, for those afflcted with ergotism, a dreaded
epidemic of the day now known to have been caused by the ingestion of
infected grain. The disease produced convulsions, seizures and other
symtoms and came to be called "St. Anthony's Fire" for those who
cared for the afflicted. The order found its
way to Naples with the Angevin dynasty
and built the Sant'Antonio Abate
hospital to deal with those afflicted in Naples; it was not a hospal
for lepers as some sources have claimed. The order was active here
until the
coming of the Aragonese dynasty in the
1400s. The premises of this church-hospital have changed owners a few times since then and the current physical configuration is the result of centuries of rebuilding and transformation, some quite recent. As it appears now, the church still stands and has recently been painted. The rest of the original church/monastery/hospital complex has been subdivided over the centuries and taken over by secularism. Very secular—there's an antique shop and a hardware store, I believe, and a lot of the square block is just taken up by apartments. (back to index) to: Miscellaneous churches (1) (2) (3) (5) (6) |
