Santuario dell'Assunta e i Riti Settennali dei Battenti
Guardia Sanframondi (BN)
KnownSacred art
The story
Every seven years the hooded men come out of the Rione Croce and beat their chests with sponges bristling with pins, until they bleed, before the Assunta. The last time was August 2024: the next is in 2031.
Access
Sanctuary FREE. The Riti take place in August every seven years
More gems in Guardia Sanframondi
VillagesGuardia Sanframondi
Guardia Sanframondi (BN)
A borgo (old village) of wine and silences, every seven years it wakes for the Riti di Penitenza, when the battenti (flagellant penitents) walk the alleys and the town turns medieval again for a week.
- History & archaeology
Museo delle Farfalle
Guardia Sanframondi (BN)
More than a thousand butterflies from every continent, collected out of passion by the lawyer Pascasio Parente and arranged in silent cases in the heart of the Samnite borgo.
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.