A recently opened and restored church dating back to the 1500's. It has seen seen a lot and thanks to the Catholic book keeping, we are able to know the majority of it.
History taken from Wikipedia (
visit link) Around the middle of the 16th century, a sailor, Bernardino Belladonna, saved from a shipwreck, felt the need to thank the Madonna by founding, together with other sailors and shipowners, a congregation with an adjoining chapel. On 31 May 1554 the cardinal granted permission and on 1 June Belladonna, Nardo Calvanico, Annibale De Pronillo and brother Albano were elected governors of the congregation. The area chosen was somewhat unusual because it was originally a protrusion of land bathed on three sides by the sea and was also located outside Porta di Massa.
A few months after the foundation of the lay congregation, work on the church began, which lasted until 1564 with the completion of the chained ceiling to avoid collapse. Between 1564 and 1565, imposing Renaissance decorative works were created which in total cost 150 ducats: a certain master Battista built the choir with a spiral staircase; in the meantime a contract was stipulated with the carpenters Ferrante and Martino for the creation of a wooden frame, gilded by Iacopo Aniello, and with a little-known painter, who had also frescoed the vault of the church, who was asked to paint a Madonna.
In the seventies of the 16th century a canvas of Saint Anthony was painted and two angels were created in the painting of the Madonna. In the meantime there were notable donations of money and works, including a panel painted, for ten ducats, by Girolamoprendito. At the end of the 16th century some structural interventions were carried out on the choir and the roof of the building.
Between 1602 and 1630 the brothers decided to modernize the church with canvases by unknown and cheap artists. In 1624 there was a repair to the sea palisade which protected the church from the sea waves. Three years later, a canvas for the sacristy, marble slabs for four pits and "riggiole" for the floor were commissioned. Between 1633 and 1634 the wooden chest of drawers was created by the carpenters Giuseppe d'Antonio, Sebastiano Milante, Giovanni Conventale and a certain Giovan Battista; it was carved by Cola Antonio Conte and a certain Michelangelo; it was gilded by Giuseppe Milone and finally a canvas painted by Battistello Caracciolo was placed in the central compartment of the chest of drawers. Silver candelabras from the goldsmith Honorius di Luca were also purchased. In the decade between 1638 and 1647, other local craftsmen commissioned the ebony furnishings from Vincenzo Cannavale, the redecoration of the chapels from the plasterer Aniello Lombardo, a canvas of Saint Nicholas from Iacopo di Castro and finally the balustrade of the main altar. by Dionisio Lazzari. From 1650 to 1700 further embellishments took place such as gilding, silver furnishings and whitewashing of vaults. In 1678 a furnishing arrangement of silver and coral furnishings was created by Giovan Domenico Vinaccia. Shortly afterwards, the palisade was reinforced under the direction of the engineer Lorenzo Ruggiano, while, following the instructions of Giovan Domenico Vinaccia, the dome was plastered and gilded with frescoes by Nicola Russo.
In 1749 the building designed by the engineer Ignazio Cuomo was finished; this was used as a sacristy, oratory and homes for the brothers. The decorations were carried out by the piper Gennaro Pagano, the plasterer Nicola Scodes, the carpenter Antonio de Curtis and the painter Giuseppe Baldi. Between 1767 and 1769 various restoration works on canvases and frescoes were carried out by Evangelista Schiano, while the dome was painted by Scodes under the direction of the painter Francesco Giordano da Policastro.
Between 1769 and 1772 Giuseppe Astarita worked there, who radically transformed the church in its layout; furthermore, decoration works were carried out by Scodes and the marble worker Antonio from Lucca. In 1775, the marble cone that overlooks the main altar was created by Lucca, based on a design by the engineer Felice Bottigliero. The works ended around 1778 due to lack of funds. Then Lucca completed some marble works and the piperno frames were created on the outside of the building; at the same time Angelo Viva created sculptures and obelisks in piperno outside the church, of which only one remains today.
During the 19th century the church was incorporated, as it is currently seen, into a fill crossed by an urban road. During the Second World War the building was damaged but subsequently spared by the building speculation on Via Marina.
The church was closed to the public for decades, falling into a serious state of decay and suffering some thefts of its furnishings. On 31 March 2022, after 42 years of closure and after a phase of restoration and conservative recovery, it reopens to the city with a solemn mass presided over by Archbishop Domenico Battaglia.
Exterior and Interior description from Wikipedia (
visit link)
External
The church is currently isolated by the curtain of buildings that once occupied Via Marina. After the Second World War, the buildings made dilapidated by the bombings and the explosion of the Caterina Costa in the port were demolished and the small religious building found in the post-war redevelopment a traffic island position between via Alcide De Gasperi and via Cristoforo Colombo .
The exterior of the church is characterized by the simple rococo style stucco façade which heralds a certain classicism in the compositional forms, it was carried out by Nicola Scodes based on a design by Giuseppe Astarita . The façade, with two orders, is currently at a lower level than the street level, and consists of a Renaissance ashlar piperno portal surmounted by the lunette arch; on the sides of the lunette there are two small polygonal windows decorated with stucco pediments. On the sides there are pilaster strips and composite columns that rest on high pedestals that support an entablature, in the center of which there is a stucco pediment that connects the first order of the facade with the terminal one, on which the last order of the facade rises characterized by the presence of two pilasters that frame the composition of the central sector which culminates with the clock supported by a pair of stucco volutes flanked by two simple polygonal openings.
On the left, in a place further back from the facade of the church and the congregation building, stands the small four-tier bell tower which rests on the escarpment base. The last order is characterized by the composition in piperno and stucco and is concluded by the spire in two-tone majolica. To the left of the bell tower is the congregation building which was built in 1749 by Cuomo, whose facades are embellished with stucco decorations.
In the gardens outside the church there is an obelisk built by Bourbon supporters to commemorate the royalist victory over the Neapolitan Republic in 1799, the arch of an ancient warehouse from the Aragonese era and the Maruzza Fountain, dating back to the sixteenth century.
Interior
The interior is composed of a single nave with a dome and two chapels on each side; the presbytery is delimited by a beautiful balustrade of commissioned marble, with mother-of-pearl and semi-precious stones created to a design by Dionisio Lazzari in 1647 and with inlaid panels depicting the Miracles of the Madonna. Behind it is the beautiful high altar, sculpted between 1769 and 1772 by the highly sought-after marble worker Antonio Di Lucca, who was also responsible for creating the rich cone that houses the sixteenth-century panel of the Madonna of Porto Salvo. On the sides of it, two niches house the statues of Saint Peter and Saint Paul by Giacomo and Angelo Viva, who also created the torch-holding cherubs on the sides of the altar and the cherubs and the Eternal Father at the top of the cone.
A work of fine workmanship is the coffered ceiling in gilded wood (from 1634 ), in the center of which is placed an oval-shaped canvas by Battistello Caracciolo illustrating the Glory of the Virgin.
Other pictorial work worthy of mention, relocated to its original position on the right of the main altar, is the Madonna of the Rosary with the souls of Purgatory by Antonio De Bellis; while two evocative eighteenth-century wooden groups ( The Immaculate Conception between Sant'Anna and San Gennaro and The Addolorata and San Giovanni ) still remain in a room in the Basilica of San Paolo Maggiore.