Description
The Basilica of San Francesco di Paola closes Piazza del Plebiscito in Naples like a great embrace of columns, facing the Royal Palace. It is one of the main examples of Neoclassical architecture in Italy, with a dome reminiscent of the Pantheon's.
Outside, what stands out is the pronaos with six Ionic columns of Carrara marble, preceded by a flight of steps. On either side opens the semicircular colonnade of the square, with the two equestrian statues of Charles III and Ferdinand I, the first by Canova.
Inside, the church is a great rotunda thirty-four meters across. The floor of polychrome marbles draws geometric patterns, while thirty-four columns eleven meters tall, with the Bourbon lily on their capitals, circle beneath the dome, which is fifty-three meters high.
On the apse stands the high altar, designed by Ferdinando Fuga in 1751: porphyry, lapis lazuli and agate. Made for another church, here it serves as a stage set, with two columns of Egyptian breccia at its sides used as candelabra.
The story begins with a French general. In 1809 Joachim Murat had convents and gardens demolished to create the Gran Foro, a colonnaded forum with a circular hall at its center for the people's assemblies. Then Murat was driven out and work stopped.
Back on the throne, Ferdinand I credited Saint Francis of Paola and promised a church right there. Pietro Bianchi won the competition, with one condition from the king: the dome must not rise above the Royal Palace. The first stone was laid in 1816, and the church was completed in 1846.
Beneath the basilica stretches a hypogeum of over a thousand square meters, cleared of debris in a 2018 restoration. It has the same dimensions as the church: perhaps it was meant to hold the Bourbon tombs, but nothing came of it.
It was also the first church in Naples with a reversed altar, a privilege granted by Pope Gregory XVI. From the galleries high up inside the drum, the royals followed Mass.
Outside, what stands out is the pronaos with six Ionic columns of Carrara marble, preceded by a flight of steps. On either side opens the semicircular colonnade of the square, with the two equestrian statues of Charles III and Ferdinand I, the first by Canova.
Inside, the church is a great rotunda thirty-four meters across. The floor of polychrome marbles draws geometric patterns, while thirty-four columns eleven meters tall, with the Bourbon lily on their capitals, circle beneath the dome, which is fifty-three meters high.
On the apse stands the high altar, designed by Ferdinando Fuga in 1751: porphyry, lapis lazuli and agate. Made for another church, here it serves as a stage set, with two columns of Egyptian breccia at its sides used as candelabra.
The story begins with a French general. In 1809 Joachim Murat had convents and gardens demolished to create the Gran Foro, a colonnaded forum with a circular hall at its center for the people's assemblies. Then Murat was driven out and work stopped.
Back on the throne, Ferdinand I credited Saint Francis of Paola and promised a church right there. Pietro Bianchi won the competition, with one condition from the king: the dome must not rise above the Royal Palace. The first stone was laid in 1816, and the church was completed in 1846.
Beneath the basilica stretches a hypogeum of over a thousand square meters, cleared of debris in a 2018 restoration. It has the same dimensions as the church: perhaps it was meant to hold the Bourbon tombs, but nothing came of it.
It was also the first church in Naples with a reversed altar, a privilege granted by Pope Gregory XVI. From the galleries high up inside the drum, the royals followed Mass.