Collegiata di San Michele Arcangelo (Solofra)
Solofra (AV)
Hidden gemSacred art
The story
From outside, an ordinary church; inside, an Irpinian Sistine Chapel: a coffered ceiling painted end to end by the Guarini, and looking up takes your breath away.
Access
FREE, church opening hours
More gems in Solofra
- Sacred art
Solofra: Collegiata di San Michele
Solofra (AV)
In the town of tanning, the Collegiata di San Michele hides a painted wooden ceiling from the seventeenth century, the work of the Solofra painter Francesco Guarini.
- Castles
Palazzo Ducale Orsini di Solofra
Solofra (AV)
The palace of the dukes who made Solofra the capital of tanning: from here they ruled an empire of leather that sold as far as Venice and the Levant.
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.