Santuario di Santa Maria dei Bossi
Casalbore (AV)
Hidden gemSacred art
The story
A country church in the middle of the woods, along the Pescasseroli-Candela drove road, built on top of a 2nd-century Roman funerary monument: faith resting on pagan bones.
Access
FREE; interior open occasionally
More gems in Casalbore
- History & archaeology
Santuario sannitico di Macchia Porcara
Casalbore (AV)
Beside a spring surface the remains of an Italic temple from the Samnite age, dedicated to Mefite, goddess of waters and fertility, and destroyed in the time of Hannibal.
History & archaeologyPonte di Santo Spirito
Casalbore (AV)
A pier and a few remains in the Miscano valley: this is all that survives of a Roman bridge on the via Traiana, the stretch of the Appia now recognised as a UNESCO heritage site.
- Sacred art
Grotta di San Michele Arcangelo (Casalbore)
Casalbore (AV)
A cavity hollowed out of the living rock, a stage on the Via Sacra Langobardorum towards the Gargano: here Lombard pilgrims stopped to pray to the warrior Archangel, one thousand three hundred years ago.
- History & archaeology
Tempio italico e Castello Normanno di Casalbore
Casalbore (AV)
A Samnite sanctuary and a Norman tower a few steps apart: three thousand years of history stacked on a single hill.
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.