Miscellaneous
Churches 2
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Again, here are some churches and
ex-monasteries scattered throughout various quarters
of Naples. And again, they are no less interesting or
worthwhile for their inclusion under this "miscellaneous"
rubric.
The church and adjacent monastery of the Spirito Santo are near
the northwest corner of the old historic city on via Roma
(also known by the original Spanish name of via Toledo).
The refurbished monastery now houses the architecture
department of the University of Naples. (The photo, left,
is in the courtyard of those premises. The photo of the
courtyard, right, is from 1890-1900.)The church and monastery got off to a false start, so to speak, in 1562, when Pope Pius IV gave the Dominican order the go-ahead for a plan to build a "conservatory" (meaning, here, "shelter") for prostitutes, their children, and the poor, in general. The early construction was demolished under viceroy Alcalà in order to expand the main road leading north out of the city. New construction at the present site began, however, soon thereafter and was generally complete by 1600 although additional construction continued well into the 1700s. At one time or another, great Neapolitan architects such as Ferdinando Fuga and Luigi Vanvitelli contributed to the final product. Many of the paintings and works in marble commissioned for the original complex are still preserved within the church. The premises served not only to "conserve" the destitute, but to teach them a trade, one of which was music; the use of "conservatory" to mean "music school" stems from this usage at this and similar institutions in Naples.
The ex-monastery of
Sant'Andrea delle Dame,
which today is part of the University of Naples School of
Medicine, was founded in 1583 to house the order of
Augustine hermits. The church interior, with a single
aisle and no transept, preserves its late-16th-century
layout; the presbytery displays rich marble wall
decorations created by the Ghetto brothers in the last
quarter of the 17th century, after a design of Giovanni
Domenico Vinaccia.The building is almost at the top of the northwest height of the historic city of Greco-Roman Neapolis and is not far from presumed site of the ancient Greek acropolis. The conversion of this site to a medical building was part of the massive construction in the early 1900s to convert the quarter into a modern hospital zone with medical school. This entailed tearing down a number of ancient buildings to erect the new hospital and the incorporation of other old structures, including Sant'Andre delle Dame, into the hospital facilities. The courtyard is open from the main entrance and may be visited.
Santa Maria della Redenzione dei
Captivi was founded under the name of Santa Maria
della Mercede by a pious association set up in 1548 to
redeem the Christians captured by the Muslims. ("Saracen" raids were common in
those days along the shores of the kingdom.) The church
was renovated in the 18th century following the latest
dictates of the Neapolitan rococo; the church is
characterized by the magnificent, almost theatrical design
of the facade by architect Ferdinando San Felice. It was
here that Alfonso Maria de Liguori, future saint and
celebrated author of Canti
di Natale (Christmas Songs) took the vows to
enter the priesthood. The location is fitting since the
church is adjacent to the music
conservatory and at the top of the street, via San
Sebastiano, long known for the presence of a great number
of music shops. (There is a lovely,
active monastery and church on the slopes of Mt.
Vesuvius named for Liguori.)[There is an historical display on the premises of the Bank if Naples about S.M. della Redenzione dei Captivi. See this link for the text of that display.]
San
Giuseppe a Chiaia is on the street named Riviera
di Chiaia, now the inner road running along the north side
of the long public park, the Villa
Comunale. When the church was built, however, in the
early 1600s, it was seaside property, the park being a
much later addition to Neapolitan topography. The original
chapel was built by Father Flaminio Magnato as a
Jesuit convalescent home. After the expulsion
of the Jesuits from Naples it became a nautical
school, and in 1817, King
Ferdinand I had it converted into a home for the
blind. It is again a church. According to historian
Vittorio Gleijeses, it once housed a religious relic that
is the source of an amusing
Neapoplitan expression.[Further mention of this church here.]
[Also, there is a longer article on this church by Selene Salvi here.]
Santa Maria Apparente
is a high, imposing church about halfway along the length
of the street named Corso Vittorio Emanuele II. That
street is one of the main east-west thoroughfares in
Naples and starts at Piedigrotta in the west (where the Mergellina train station
now stands), runs up the hill and then east all the way to
a point above the National museum,
a distance of about two km. The road was built in the
mid-1800s, so when this church was built in the late 1500s
the area was truly bucolic, set, as it is, below the
height of San Martino. The church was commissioned by
Brother Filippo da Perugia and the original architect was
Giovan Battista Cavagna. The buildings adjacent to the
church formed part of the original monastic complex, which
was then expanded between 1634 and 1656. The monastery was
closed in the late 1700s and for a while served as a
prison, housing inmates jailed in the wake of the 1799
insurrection that led to the short-lived Neapolitan Republic as well as
prisoners arrested after the turmoil of the 1848 revolts.
The original plan for the main street in front of the
church called for major road-straightening, a bridge, and
demolition of some of the nearby buildings, none of which
came to fruition; thus, the high double stairway entrance
to the church sits directly on a curve. In the form that
one sees it today, the stairway was rebuilt in 1930.
Santa Maria di Montecalvario
is in the heart of the Spanish Quarters of Naples.
The church was founded in 1560 with a donation by the
Neapolitan noblewoman Ilaria d'Apuzzo. It was consecrated
as a Franciscan establishment in 1574. This church, too,
was originally part of a monastic complex. The monastery
was one of the many that were closed in Naples during the
brief French rule of the kingdom
in the early 1800s. For some years it served as a
barracks. The church has been maintained since 1923 by
fathers of the Mercedari Order. Among the many art works
of interest in the church are some attributed to Giacomo
di Cosenza, but, in any event, to the school responsible
for introducing into the Kingdom of Naples in the 1520s
the modern styles of Raffaello and Michelangelo.
Chiesa del Cenacolo (Church of the Last Supper) is on the Corso Vittorio Emanuele, a short distance from Santa Maria Apparente (above). As churches go in Naples, it is relatively recent; it stems from the early 1800s. It was originally the chapel in a rest home for the elderly, the structure that surrounds this small church on both sides and which has since been converted to other uses. The Cenacolo is the first church in Naples run by the laity.
Sant’ Efremo Vecchio is another of the many churches in the Sanità area of Naples. This
church, too, is the eponym for the street; it leads away
from the school of Veterinary
Medicine (itself a converted monastery, that of
the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli
alle Croci).The name Efremo is a
corruption of Efebo, a third-century bishop buried in
the nearby catacombs. In the 1200s his remains were then
deposited in a church cut into the rock, itself, and
then, in 1539, the Capucin order was given the property
and built the first monastery in the province. The
present configuration of the premises is due to a series
of restorations, one in the 1720s, another in the 1770s
and one in the 1840s. After the closing of monastic
orders in the wake of the unification of Italy in 1861,
the order again came into possession of the property in
1887. The majolica tile inlays at the entrance are from
the 1830s and are by Tommaso Bruno. The main altar is
from the 1773 and is by Michele Salemme. The church does
contain, however, remnants of sculpture done much
earlier, before any of the more modern restorations. The
rather well-known sculpture of The Reclining Bishop is, in fact, from
the mid-1500s. It is now positioned behind the altar,
but the speculation is that it was originally a tomb
marker at another location and that it was moved inside
when the saint's remains were transferred. The nearby catacombs of Sant' Efremo
Vecchio, although open occasionally for visits,
have presented archaeologists with a number of as yet
unresolved questions, most of these having to do with
the relatively late location and identification of the
catacombs—1931.
The church of San Tarciso Martire
is located right next to the ponti rossi (red bridges), remnants of
the old Roman aqueduct, in the Arenaccia section of
Naples, directly across the street from another round
building, the mammoth Piazza grande apartment
complex. Precise details are scarce although the church
is not that old, dating only from the first quarter of
the 1800s. I have found no explanation for the odd tower
shape of the church. The interior contains the painting,
Madonna and the Christ
Child, and is from 1842 and is signed by Michele Foggia. The
church does not appear to be open, at least not for
regular church services, although there is an adjacent
annex that functions in a religious as well as social
capacity.
The presence of the Augustinian order in
Naples goes back to the 13th century. This small church,
however, the Madonna
of Buon Consiglio [Succour or Eternal Help], is the newest of the
order's churches and was built in 1954. It is located on
via Gerolamo
Santacroce as that road starts down from the
Vomero hill to connect to via Salvator Rosa and then to the main
body of Naples. The street, itself, is only from the
1920s and was part of the urban
expansion of Vomero after WWI. The adjacent
Augustinian monastery itself, however, is actually from
1883 and was a result of that order having to leave its
earlier premises higher up in the Vomero section of
Naples. The church is across the street from the
historic villa Majo
(or Maio) and overlooks a small, newly renovated path, a
surprisingly bucolic short-cut down through the trees
past a small park dedicated to Neapolitan playwright, Raffaele Viviani, and to the
road, Corso Vittorio
Emanuele.
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