Chiesa di Santa Maria del Castagneto
Cusano Mutri (BN)
Hidden gemSacred art
The story
Founded at the end of the 7th century amid the chestnut groves, survivor of earthquakes and centuries of neglect: a rural church that seems to grow out of the wood, where silence is part of the furnishing.
Access
FREE, interior open during services
More gems in Cusano Mutri
- Nature & hiking
Cusano Mutri e le Gole di Caccaviola
Cusano Mutri (BN)
The Titerno has carved the limestone into a gorge of waterfalls and green pools, where the light filters down between the walls: you descend with rope and helmet, in the heart of the Matese.
- Hiking
Gole di Caccaviola
Cusano Mutri (BN)
Carved by the Titerno in the Matese, the gorges of Caccaviola are traversed with harness and helmet, among roaring waterfalls and pools where the light barely filters through.
VillagesCusano Mutri
Cusano Mutri (BN)
Houses of white limestone clinging to the slopes of the Mutria, medieval alleys and porticoes that survived the 1688 earthquake, and in autumn the air that smells of porcini mushrooms.
- Nature & hiking
Forre di Lavello
Cusano Mutri (BN)
The Titerno has carved the limestone into deep gorges, and a path along an ancient Samnite mule track skirts them among caves, bridges and the constant sound of water.
- In the water & diving
Mulino di Zi' Fiore e Ponte del Mulino
Cusano Mutri (BN)
A mill carved into the rock face, still since the Fifties, reached by an arched bridge once crossed by the Oscan mule track. The water keeps turning a wheel that is no longer there.
- Hiking
Gole di Conca Torta
Cusano Mutri (BN)
A stone's throw from the houses, the Reviola torrent has cut a limestone gullet between little waterfalls and green pools: you go through in a harness, hanging from steel cables, with the water under your feet.
More gems: Sacred art
Sacred artCappella Sansevero (Cristo Velato)
Napoli (NA)
Beneath a veil of marble that still seems to breathe, Sanmartino's Cristo Velato rests in the chapel's half-light, and the whiteness of the stone deceives every eye.
Sacred artDuomo di Napoli
Napoli
Three times a year the city holds its breath as the blood of San Gennaro waits to liquefy, among Gothic naves and the gold of the chapel devoted to him.
Sacred artCappella del Tesoro di San Gennaro
Napoli
Behind a bronze gate lie silverware, gems and the jewel-studded mitre of the saint: a treasure heaped up over centuries by the devotion of Naples.
Sacred artChiesa del Gesù Nuovo
Napoli
The facade of pyramid-cut piperno stone hides symbols carved into the blocks, while inside the Baroque bursts out in marble and in the memory of the physician Giuseppe Moscati.
Sacred artChiostro di Santa Chiara
Napoli
A garden of pillars clad in yellow and blue majolica, where lemon pergolas and eighteenth-century scenes painted on the tiles keep the noise of the city at bay.
- Sacred art
Santa Maria delle Anime del Purgatorio ad Arco
Via Tribunali 39
Bronze skulls stand guard at the entrance, and down in the hypogeum the cult of the anime pezzentelle (adopted souls of the dead) still leaves flowers and prayers beside abandoned crania.