Collegiata di Santa Maria Assunta (Bagnoli)
Bagnoli Irpino (AV)
Hidden gemSacred art
The story
The wooden choir carved by Giovan Battista Ferrari is a forest of sculpted timber, a Baroque masterpiece hidden in a mountain village almost no tourist ever reaches.
Access
FREE, church opening hours
More gems in Bagnoli Irpino
- Castles
Castello Cavaniglia e Palazzo Tenta
Bagnoli Irpino (AV)
The stronghold of the Cavaniglia, lords of black truffle and beech forests, and beside it the palazzo that today is the memory house of Bagnoli.
- Nature & hiking
Grotta del Caliendo
Bagnoli Irpino (AV)
The stream goes into the mountain and carves a world inside it: sumps, underground waterfalls and galleries where the water has been at work for millions of years. One of the most important caves in the Picentini.
- Sacred art
Grotta di San Guglielmo
Bagnoli Irpino (AV)
Here, they say, Guglielmo da Vercelli withdrew to pray before founding Montevergine and the Goleto: a cleft in the rock, and a man who spoke with God.
HikingMonte Cervialto
Bagnoli Irpino (AV)
The highest peak of the Picentini, 1,809 metres: on a clear day you see the Tyrrhenian and the Lucanian Apennines together. Inside the mountain, the water that quenches Puglia.
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.