Description
The Church of San Pietro a Majella is a Gothic church on Via dei Tribunali, in the old center of Naples, famous for its seventeenth-century coffered ceiling with the large canvases by Mattia Preti. Dedicated to Celestine V, the pope of the “great refusal”, it stands next to the music conservatory that occupies the former monastery.
The façade, all in piperno stone, has a rose window at the top and, at the bottom, a flight of steps leading to a Baroque marble portal with a broken pediment.
On the left rises the Gothic bell tower, 42 meters high, in tuff with piperno corners. Between the second and third floors it has marble tablets with the coats of arms of Celestine V.
Inside there are three naves: the central one has a coffered ceiling, the side ones cross vaults, and along the sides ten chapels plus four around the presbytery.
The ceiling is the highlight: it was designed by Bonaventura Presti in the mid-seventeenth century and filled with paintings by Mattia Preti, between 1657 and 1673, during his stay in Naples.
They are episodes from the lives of Saint Peter Celestine and Saint Catherine of Alexandria, and are among the high points of seventeenth-century Italian painting. Ten paintings are placed in the niches of the nave and the transept.
In the apse is the high altar, designed by Cosimo Fanzago, with a balustrade of polychrome marbles and above it a wooden crucifix from the fifteenth century. Behind it, a wooden choir from the early sixteenth century is inlaid with scenes of saints, and on the walls are frescoes by Nunzio Rossi from 1646.
Each chapel has its own story. The Leonessa Chapel has a large cycle of frescoes from 1355-60 with the Stories of Saint Martin, by an anonymous master.
In the Petra Chapel is a Madonna of Succor from the mid-fourteenth century; the Staibano Chapel has frescoes with Stories of Mary Magdalene. And in one chapel is buried the philosopher and scientist Leonardo Di Capua.
In the transept are also the remains of a fourteenth-century fresco of the Madonna of Humility, and a Renaissance portal leads to the cloister. Since 1826 the monastery has housed the Conservatory of music: in the first cloister, from around 1660, there is a sculpture of Beethoven by Francesco Jerace, and from the second you enter the conservatory's library and museum.
The church was born at the end of the thirteenth century at the will of Charles II of Anjou, where two convents of nuns stood, on the initiative of Giovanni Pipino da Barletta. Entrusted to the Celestines, it was called “di San Pietro a Majella” in memory of the hermitage where Pietro da Morrone, the future Celestine V, lived.
In the seventeenth century the abbot of the Celestines, Fabrizio Campana, wanted it Baroque, with stuccoes and marbles. Then a long restoration, between 1888 and 1927, tried to give it back its original Gothic look. With the arrival of the Neapolitan Republic of 1799 the Celestines were driven out.
Don't miss
• Mattia Preti's canvases on the ceiling.
• The Leonessa Chapel.
• The Gothic bell tower.
• Fanzago's altar.
Did you know?
• Celestine V set up his curia at Castel Nuovo, in Naples, protected but in fact a hostage of the king: eleven days after his resignation the conclave, gathered in the same castle, elected Boniface VIII.
• For many commentators on Dante, Celestine is “he who made through cowardice the great refusal”: but the identification is debated.
The façade, all in piperno stone, has a rose window at the top and, at the bottom, a flight of steps leading to a Baroque marble portal with a broken pediment.
On the left rises the Gothic bell tower, 42 meters high, in tuff with piperno corners. Between the second and third floors it has marble tablets with the coats of arms of Celestine V.
Inside there are three naves: the central one has a coffered ceiling, the side ones cross vaults, and along the sides ten chapels plus four around the presbytery.
The ceiling is the highlight: it was designed by Bonaventura Presti in the mid-seventeenth century and filled with paintings by Mattia Preti, between 1657 and 1673, during his stay in Naples.
They are episodes from the lives of Saint Peter Celestine and Saint Catherine of Alexandria, and are among the high points of seventeenth-century Italian painting. Ten paintings are placed in the niches of the nave and the transept.
In the apse is the high altar, designed by Cosimo Fanzago, with a balustrade of polychrome marbles and above it a wooden crucifix from the fifteenth century. Behind it, a wooden choir from the early sixteenth century is inlaid with scenes of saints, and on the walls are frescoes by Nunzio Rossi from 1646.
Each chapel has its own story. The Leonessa Chapel has a large cycle of frescoes from 1355-60 with the Stories of Saint Martin, by an anonymous master.
In the Petra Chapel is a Madonna of Succor from the mid-fourteenth century; the Staibano Chapel has frescoes with Stories of Mary Magdalene. And in one chapel is buried the philosopher and scientist Leonardo Di Capua.
In the transept are also the remains of a fourteenth-century fresco of the Madonna of Humility, and a Renaissance portal leads to the cloister. Since 1826 the monastery has housed the Conservatory of music: in the first cloister, from around 1660, there is a sculpture of Beethoven by Francesco Jerace, and from the second you enter the conservatory's library and museum.
The church was born at the end of the thirteenth century at the will of Charles II of Anjou, where two convents of nuns stood, on the initiative of Giovanni Pipino da Barletta. Entrusted to the Celestines, it was called “di San Pietro a Majella” in memory of the hermitage where Pietro da Morrone, the future Celestine V, lived.
In the seventeenth century the abbot of the Celestines, Fabrizio Campana, wanted it Baroque, with stuccoes and marbles. Then a long restoration, between 1888 and 1927, tried to give it back its original Gothic look. With the arrival of the Neapolitan Republic of 1799 the Celestines were driven out.
Don't miss
• Mattia Preti's canvases on the ceiling.
• The Leonessa Chapel.
• The Gothic bell tower.
• Fanzago's altar.
Did you know?
• Celestine V set up his curia at Castel Nuovo, in Naples, protected but in fact a hostage of the king: eleven days after his resignation the conclave, gathered in the same castle, elected Boniface VIII.
• For many commentators on Dante, Celestine is “he who made through cowardice the great refusal”: but the identification is debated.