Santuario della Madonna dei Lattani
Roccamonfina (CE)
Hidden gemSacred art
The story
Among ancient chestnut groves, on the flank of an extinct volcano, the Franciscan convent founded by Saint Bernardino of Siena gathers the silence at eight hundred and fifty metres above Campania.
More gems in Roccamonfina
- Villages
Roccamonfina
Roccamonfina (CE)
Nestled in the crater of an extinct volcano, Roccamonfina smells of chestnut groves and guards the Ciampate del Diavolo, ancient human footprints pressed into the volcanic rock.
- Volcanoes
Vulcano di Roccamonfina
Roccamonfina (CE)
An extinct volcano clothed in chestnut groves, where the crater has become a plateau and every trail smells of dark earth and ancient woods.
- Sacred art
Eremo di Monte Atano
Roccamonfina (CE)
On a volcanic cone covered in chestnut trees stand the walls of a hermitage and a mute little chapel: a place of prayer that the wood is slowly taking back.
History & archaeologyOrto della Regina (mura megalitiche)
Roccamonfina (CE)
In the silence of a centuries-old chestnut wood appears a ring of cyclopean boulders 180 metres long, raised by the Aurunci or the Samnites: legend says princess Fina hid here, and the volcano still bears her name.
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.