Grotta di San Michele (Faicchio)
Faicchio (BN)
Hidden gemSacred art
The story
On Monte Monaco di Gioia a natural cavity preserves the Lombard cult of the archangel, with frescoes of Byzantine flavour faded by damp and a silence that tastes of rock.
More gems in Faicchio
CastlesCastello di Faicchio
Faicchio (BN)
On a rocky spur above the Titerno valley, the ducal castle of Faicchio watches over the village with its Norman towers reworked through the centuries.
History & archaeologyMonte Acero e la cinta megalitica sannitica
Faicchio (BN)
Three kilometres of polygonal blocks, dry-laid and interlocked, have ringed the summit for twenty-six centuries, and no one up there will ask you for a ticket: from the Samnite arx the gaze plunges over the whole Valle Telesina.
- History & archaeology
Ponte Fabio Massimo (Ponte del Diavolo)
Faicchio (BN)
The bridge that legend has Fabius Maximus the Delayer cross as he chased Hannibal, and that the locals call the Devil's Bridge: below, the Titerno carves a dark gorge; the polygonal-work foundations are older than Rome.
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.