Again, more churches in various parts of Naples. And again, they are no less interesting for their inclusion under this "miscellaneous" rubric. (This is part of a series. Links to earlier parts are at the end.)

—Santa Maria di Montesanto (top photo) is the final resting place of Alessandro Scarlatti, the great composer of the Neapolitan Baroque. The original foundation of a church in Naples built by Carmelite fathers from Sicily was in 1640 on other premises, near the old San Bartolomeo theater, the original opera house in Naples. That proved too noisy an environment for the order and they moved to a new site at Montesanto, at the base of the San Martino hill, in 1646. The architect of the church and adjacent monastery was Pietro de Marino; the dome is by Dionisio Lazzari. It was finished in 1680.

The church contains a bust of San Gaetano, invoked by the people as a protector from the great plague of 1656 and at the origin of a typically Neapolitan story. Farmers coming down to this church from the San Martino hill had to walk a ways along the outside of the city wall and come in through the major Royal Gate past the church of the the church of the Spirito Santo. Rather than do all that walking, they simply knocked a hole in the wall nearer to their church and came straight on in. The Spanish viceroy at the time, Ramiro Guzman, finally caved in and officialized the hole, calling upon the great architect, Cosimo Fanzago, to make it into a worthy gate. He did, after which it was called Porta Medina. To the people, it was Porta "Pertuso"—Neapolitan dialect for "hole". All the walls and gates in that area were eliminated in the 1870s, and the guardian bust of San Gaetano, mounted over "The Hole" was moved into the church.

The church is in the Santa Lucia section of Naples and was founded by the fishing community in 1576, becoming a legitimate parish in the 1597. The street, via Santa Lucia, that the building fronts on, used to be almost at water's edge and, was, in fact, the main street leading up to the Royal Palace, a short distance away. That is difficult to see, today, since the urban renewal of 1900 put land-fill and extra blocks of large buildings between the church and the sea. That period of building changed the entire configuration of the coast line for hundreds of yards on both sides of the Castel dell’Ovo (Egg Castle), the most prominent landmark near the church.

The church was restored in the 1850s after many decades of neglect.

—San Nicola alla Carità (photo below, row 1, photo1)is on Via Toldeo amidst a number of other churches and monasteries built as the Spanish expanded the city to the north along their new thoroughfare named for the great viceroy, Don Pedro de Toledo. In the early 1600s, the fathers of the Pii Operai order were concerned with caring for the sick in that area. In 1646, one of them, a Swiss named Giovan Battista Burgo, left the group enough money to buy the original building on the site; a small church was built on the premises in 1647. It was under expansion in 1656 when the great plague of that year broke out. Construction was halted and then restarted and finished by 1716. The order was surpressed by Murat and the premises given over to military use. The religious order was restored in 1819 and the church redone in 1843. The facade was designed by the great painter of the Neapolitan Baroque, Francesco Solimena. The interior of the church also contains his Storia di San Nicola.

—Chapel of San Giovanni di Pappacoda (row 1, photo2) is in the heart of the historic center of Naples, one block east of the major road, via Mezzocannone, in the university district. It is across from the ”Orientale” universityof Naples in the square of San Giovanni Maggiore. The chapel was founded in 1415 by Artusio Pappacoda, a nobleman of the Angevin court. The chapel was redone in the 1770s and little remains of the original late-Gothic frescoes and ornamentation within the chapel, itself.

The ornamental main portal is the work of Antonio Baboccio di Piperno, He was a goldsmith, architect and sculptor. (Since his name, Piperno, is also the name of one of the most used kinds of rock used in building"peperino" in English—used in building, one is tempted to think that his surname was derived from his craft (such as "Smith" or "Cartwright"). He is well known for his work on the cathedrals of Milan, Naples, and Messina, as well as works in France; he was one of the pirmary "cathedral builders" of the Angevin dynasty in France and Italy. Not seen in this photo is the small Gothic belfry on the north-east corner of the chapel. It, too, is by Piperno and was retained during the 18th- century restoration.

—Santa Maria alla Carità. (row 1, photo3) Like many of the other churches along via Toledo (aka via Roma), the small church of Sant Maria alla Carità with an adjacent monastrery was established as a "conservatory"—that is, a shelter for destitute and sick women— in the mid-1500s. Interestingly, this was the beginning of the new age of larger hospitals in Naples, which fact diminished the need for smaller institutions such as Santa Maria alla Carità. The benevolent "conservatory," thus, was not financially able to support itself. The monastery was closed and reopened various times under various circumstances. The church, itself, was given to the confraternity of the Bianchi del Rosario in 1823; they remodelled it completely, giving the facade the appearance that it has to this day. The church is remembered for the visit of Pope Pius iX in 1848 as well as for the fact the premises hold a number of important documents relating to the lives of prominent Neapolitan artists of the 1600s, such as Battistello and Cavallino.

—San Vitale (row 1, photo 4) is in Fuorigrotta, a western suburb of Naples, on the other side of the Posillipo hill. As early as 985 a.d. there is documentation of a church dedicated to Saint Vitalis (see Regii Neapolitani Archivi Monumenta, 11, Napoli 1849, p. 55). The presence of the cult of Vitalis may go back to as early as the 600s when Naples was a dependency of the Byzantine exarchate of Ravenna (where there is still prominent religious architecture dedicated to the saint.)

The well-known San Vitale church in Fuorigrotta that was simply called "the church"—it went without saying— goes back to the 1300s and was one of the most sacred and revered houses of worship in the area. That lasted until the 1930s when Mussolini's mega-builders—to the horror of the local population—decided to tear it down to make room for a broad new street to the brand new Mostra d’Oltremare, the overseas fairgrounds. The new church of San Vitale, thus, is not really that old. It contains art and ornamentation from the original church and, most importantly, a plaque that informs you that this—from 1837 until 1939 (when the original church was demolished) was where the tomb of the greatest of all Italian Romantic poets, Giacomo Leopardi, was to be found. (When the demolition came, Leopardi's tomb was moved to the reputed final resting place of another poet, Virgil.)

—Santa Maria degli Angeli a Pizzofalcone. (row 2, photo1) In spite of the surrounding urban sprawl that has encroached upon this church since it was finished in 1610, it is still easy to see from many spots in the western part of the city. In those days, if you walked out the front door of the church and turned right, you would within a few minutes be at the Pizzofalcone cliff overlooking the bay and the Egg Castle (Castel dell'Ovo). The property had originally (1587) been given to the Theatine order by Costanza del Carretto, d'Oria, princess of Melfi. The interior of the church is perfectly rectangular and is so strikingly symmetruical in the postions of the naves, transept and apse that an early comment on the structure was that it was "best-proportioned church in Naples." The church contains significant art from the 1600s and 1700s. Also, some damgae done to the structure in WWII has been repaired. The Theatine monastic order was surpressed (as were all religious orders) by the government of Murat in 1808, and though the church remained open, the gardens and the monastery, itself, were taken over for other purposes. Today, for example, one part of the old monastery is now a military court-room; another has been incorporated into the adjacent Politeama , one of the most popular venues in Naples for plays and musical theater.

—Ascensione a Chiaia. (row 2, photo 2) The church and adjacent Celestine monastery were founded at the beginning of the 14th century and refurbished in 1360 under King Robert of Anjou. Thus, it is earlier than the nearby Spanish churches of the 1500s and 1600s built in this Chiaia section of Naples not far from the sea. Ascensione was completely redone, however, under the Spanish, and that work was finished in 1645 by the architect from Bergamo who left so many signs of his genius in Naples, Cosimo Fanzago. The 17th- century dome was then completely redone in 1767. The Greek-cross layout with a central cupola is embellished by three altars, one of which contains an altar-piece by Luca Giordano depicting St. Michael the Archangel. In the chapel on the left there is a painting by Alfonso di Sprigna showing Celestine V renouncing the Papacy, an historic event that actually took place in Naples (at the Maschio Angioino).

Link to:
part 1;
part 2;
part 3.