Description
The Basilica of the Santissima Annunziata Maggiore is an eighteenth-century church by Luigi Vanvitelli, in the historic center of Naples, in the Pendino district near Forcella. It is part of a large complex that for centuries took in the city's abandoned children: next to the convent entrance you can still see, sealed, the opening of the foundling wheel, where mothers left their newborns.
The façade has a slightly concave line and two superimposed orders of classical columns. On the left rises the mighty sixteenth-century bell tower, which preserves its original forms almost intact.
Beside it opens the fifteenth-century entrance arch to the complex, by Tommaso Malvito, with a Madonna of Mercy on the archivolt and a seventeenth-century wooden door inlaid with the symbols of the Eucharist carried in triumph by children.
In the vestibule is an inscription in Latin and ancient Greek dedicated to Vespasian, in thanks from the city for the rebuilding of the Gymnasium after the eruption of Vesuvius in 79.
The interior is a Latin cross, with a single nave and six side chapels, and is considered one of Vanvitelli's finest creations: spacious and airy.
The hand of his son Carlo can be seen in the arrangement of the 44 Corinthian columns, which recalls the Palatine Chapel of the Reggia di Caserta, and the dome on its slender drum, at a height of 67 meters, is attributed to him.
In the niches are eight white stucco statues representing the Virtues, the work of a group of sculptors directed by Giuseppe Sanmartino.
On the right side open the rooms that escaped the fire: the Carafa Chapel, with sixteenth-century marbles and funerary monuments, and the Chapel of the Treasure, with the relics of the saints that arrived from Lesina.
In the chapel the gilded bronze busts were cast in the eighteenth century and replaced by copies in wood and stucco. The sacristy has frescoes by Belisario Corenzio with stories from the Old Testament.
Under the dome is the succorpo, a circular underground church built by Vanvitelli so that Mass could continue to be celebrated during the works, with six altar niches where he placed the sculptures that survived the fire. It contains a Madonna and Child by Domenico Gagini.
The Real Casa dell'Annunziata, sponsored by a congregation founded in 1318 and supported by kings and noble families, included a hospital, a convent, a hospice for foundlings and a conservatory for poor girls.
In the wheel room a novice, the rotara, washed the newborn, gave it a name and carried it to the convent up a narrow staircase, the “stairs of hope”.
Parents sometimes left half a coin or a torn note, keeping the other half to recognize the child, in the hope of taking it back in better times. The wheel was closed in 1875, but little ones continued to be left at night on the steps. The convent took in foundlings until 1970.
In 2021 the wheel was restored and there is a small multimedia museum.
In 1757 a fire badly destroyed the sixteenth-century church, and the works were entrusted to Vanvitelli. His son Carlo carried on. In the Second World War the building was damaged again.
Don't miss
• The foundling wheel.
• The succorpo.
• The statues of the Virtues.
• The Carafa Chapel.
Did you know?
• In the Carafa Chapel, in a seventeenth-century reliquary, lies the skeleton of a newborn girl found among the basilica's building rubble, a reminder of the children taken in.
• The basilica stands where the Gymnasium and the hippodrome of Neapolis once were.
The façade has a slightly concave line and two superimposed orders of classical columns. On the left rises the mighty sixteenth-century bell tower, which preserves its original forms almost intact.
Beside it opens the fifteenth-century entrance arch to the complex, by Tommaso Malvito, with a Madonna of Mercy on the archivolt and a seventeenth-century wooden door inlaid with the symbols of the Eucharist carried in triumph by children.
In the vestibule is an inscription in Latin and ancient Greek dedicated to Vespasian, in thanks from the city for the rebuilding of the Gymnasium after the eruption of Vesuvius in 79.
The interior is a Latin cross, with a single nave and six side chapels, and is considered one of Vanvitelli's finest creations: spacious and airy.
The hand of his son Carlo can be seen in the arrangement of the 44 Corinthian columns, which recalls the Palatine Chapel of the Reggia di Caserta, and the dome on its slender drum, at a height of 67 meters, is attributed to him.
In the niches are eight white stucco statues representing the Virtues, the work of a group of sculptors directed by Giuseppe Sanmartino.
On the right side open the rooms that escaped the fire: the Carafa Chapel, with sixteenth-century marbles and funerary monuments, and the Chapel of the Treasure, with the relics of the saints that arrived from Lesina.
In the chapel the gilded bronze busts were cast in the eighteenth century and replaced by copies in wood and stucco. The sacristy has frescoes by Belisario Corenzio with stories from the Old Testament.
Under the dome is the succorpo, a circular underground church built by Vanvitelli so that Mass could continue to be celebrated during the works, with six altar niches where he placed the sculptures that survived the fire. It contains a Madonna and Child by Domenico Gagini.
The Real Casa dell'Annunziata, sponsored by a congregation founded in 1318 and supported by kings and noble families, included a hospital, a convent, a hospice for foundlings and a conservatory for poor girls.
In the wheel room a novice, the rotara, washed the newborn, gave it a name and carried it to the convent up a narrow staircase, the “stairs of hope”.
Parents sometimes left half a coin or a torn note, keeping the other half to recognize the child, in the hope of taking it back in better times. The wheel was closed in 1875, but little ones continued to be left at night on the steps. The convent took in foundlings until 1970.
In 2021 the wheel was restored and there is a small multimedia museum.
In 1757 a fire badly destroyed the sixteenth-century church, and the works were entrusted to Vanvitelli. His son Carlo carried on. In the Second World War the building was damaged again.
Don't miss
• The foundling wheel.
• The succorpo.
• The statues of the Virtues.
• The Carafa Chapel.
Did you know?
• In the Carafa Chapel, in a seventeenth-century reliquary, lies the skeleton of a newborn girl found among the basilica's building rubble, a reminder of the children taken in.
• The basilica stands where the Gymnasium and the hippodrome of Neapolis once were.