Duomo di San Matteo e cripta
Salerno
KnownSacred art
The story
Beneath the Norman naves rest the relics of the evangelist Matthew, in a baroque crypt of marble and mirrors where the half-light turns to gold.
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More gems in Salerno
Nature & hikingGiardino della Minerva
Salerno
Terraces of medicinal plants step down towards the gulf: a garden of simples tied to the Scuola Medica Salernitana, where medieval herbalism still breathes among pergolas and fountains.
CastlesCastello di Arechi
Salerno
Perched on the Bonadies hill, it has watched over the gulf of Salerno for more than a thousand years: Lombard stone, crenellated towers and the sea stretching to the Costiera Amalfitana on the horizon.
- History & archaeology
Acquedotto Medievale ("Ponti del Diavolo")
Salerno
Pointed arches stride across the valley in the old heart of Salerno: legend says the devil raised them in a single night.
- Street art
Rione Fornelle — Muri d'Autore
Salerno (SA)
In the ancient heart of Salerno the Fornelle quarter has been reborn with 'Muri d'Autore': verses by Alfonso Gatto and other poets turned into murals, where the street reads like a page.
- Street art
Murale di Trotula de Ruggiero di Jorit
Salerno (SA)
Along the wall of a car park in via Vinciprova, Jorit devotes an immense face to Trotula de Ruggiero, the woman doctor of the Scuola Salernitana who treated women a thousand years ago.
History & archaeologyMuseo Archeologico Provinciale
Salerno (SA)
Fished up from the nets in the gulf in 1930, the bronze head of Apollo watches over the halls: the emblem of a museum that gathers the archaeology of the Salerno area.
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.