Benevento
23 places
- History & archaeology
Teatro Romano e il Triggio
Benevento
The great Hadrianic theatre opens up all at once among the alleys of the Triggio, the oldest quarter, where Roman stone and medieval houses blur into one another.
Sacred artHortus Conclusus
Benevento
In the garden of the San Domenico convent, the bronzes of Mimmo Paladino: a horse in a golden mask among ancient capitals and fountains, in a garden suspended between myth and meditation.
History & archaeologyPonte Leproso
Benevento
On the ancient Via Appia the stone arches stride across the river Sabato: the same threshold that travellers bound for Rome once crossed to enter Benevento.
History & archaeologyArco di Traiano
Benevento (BN)
Golden marble carved dense with reliefs, the arch that celebrated Trajan still marks the entrance to the road that led toward Brindisi and the East.
Sacred artChiesa di Santa Sofia
Benevento (BN)
A Lombard church with a star-shaped plan, a World Heritage site, where columns and arches trace an unusual geometry left almost intact for over a thousand years.
History & archaeologyMuseo del Sannio
Benevento (BN)
The medieval cloister of Santa Sofia, a UNESCO site, with its forty-seven columns that weave together real and fantastic figures, holds the layered memory of the Sannio.
- History & archaeology
ARCOS — Museo d'arte contemporanea Sannio
Benevento (BN)
Beneath vaults of tufo (volcanic tuff), in the underground spaces of a former air-raid shelter, the contemporary art of the Sannio dialogues with the Egyptian treasures of the temple of Isis.
CastlesRocca dei Rettori
Benevento (BN)
At the gateway to Benevento, the Rocca dei Rettori, once seat of the papal governors, watches over the city from its gardens, amid Lombard and Samnite memories.
History & archaeologyTeatro Romano di Benevento
Benevento (BN)
Built under Hadrian and able to hold thousands of spectators, the Roman theatre of Benevento still opens its stone tiers to performances, among the houses of the old town.
History & archaeologyArco del Sacramento
Benevento (BN)
Older than the Arco di Traiano and infinitely lonelier: a brick arch surfacing among the buildings of the Triggio quarter, with no crowd and no ticket office, the area of the Roman forum lying at its feet.
History & archaeologyObelisco egizio del Tempio di Iside
Benevento (BN)
Red Aswan granite planted in a Samnite square: the surviving twin of the obelisk that Domitian dedicated to Isis. The foreign goddess lit the magical fame of Benevento long before the janare (Benevento witches).
- History & archaeology
Bue Apis
Benevento (BN)
An Egyptian granite bull crouching at the corner of an avenue, ignored by the traffic. For centuries the people of Benevento called it 'o vove, the ox, and wound their superstitions around it: it is the most physical remnant of the cult of Isis.
History & archaeologyCriptoportico dei Santi Quaranta
Benevento (BN)
Half-buried Roman corridors, gutted by the bombs of 1943 and never raised again: an imperial warehouse reduced to a skeleton among the houses, where the silence is older than the city.
- History & archaeology
Ruderi dei Morticelli
Benevento (BN)
Behind the Roman theatre, a monastery of the year 837 reduced to dust by the bombing, and before that turned into the burial ground of newborn children who had died. The people of Benevento still call it i Morticelli, the little dead, and the name weighs more than the stones.
Sacred artCripta di San Marco dei Sabariani
Benevento (BN)
In 2007 they thought they had found a cistern under via De Vita: it was the frescoed crypt of a church swallowed by the earthquake of 1688. A piece of the city resurfacing from underground.
MuseumsJanua — Museo delle Streghe
Benevento (BN)
Herbs of power, ex voto, anthropomorphic fetishes and an artificial walnut tree that lights up in the dark: here the janara (Benevento witch) stops being a joke and goes back to being restless anthropology.
Sacred artChiesa di Santa Maria della Verita'
Benevento (BN)
An 18th-century church built right up against the Roman theatre: the pagan cavea serves as foundation for the nave. Stratigraphy of faith, in the open air.
Sacred artChiesa di Sant'Ilario a Port'Aurea
Benevento (BN)
A Lombard hall a stone's throw from the Arco di Traiano: inside, full-size casts of the frieze let you read close up what on the arch stays ten metres above your head.
Sacred artBasilica di San Bartolomeo Apostolo
Benevento (BN)
Since 839 Benevento has guarded — and disputed with Rome — the relics of the apostle flayed alive: the urn beneath the baroque altar is the most macabre and most devout heart of the city.
- Villages
Port'Arsa e le mura longobarde del Triggio
Benevento (BN)
The only surviving Lombard gate, raised with stones stolen from the Roman monuments: you pass through it and end up in the alleys of the Triggio, where the medieval street plan has never moved.
- In the water & diving
Area archeologica di Cellarulo
Benevento (BN)
Where the Sabato surrenders itself to the Calore stood the city's pre-Roman river port: reed beds, willows and the stumps of a bridge, in a strip of countryside outside of time.
In the water & divingPonte delle Serretelle
Benevento (BN)
A humpback bridge that no longer leads anywhere: the torrent changed course and left it there, one arch collapsed and the roots eating it away. In 1113 men fought here against the Normans.
History & archaeologyPonte Valentino (via Traiana)
Benevento (BN)
A Roman bridge no one comes to see: ancient stone, the Calore below, and the feeling of being the only one ever to have found it.