Description
The church of Santa Maria di Portosalvo is a small church in Naples' port area, on Via Marina, isolated like a traffic island between Via De Gasperi and Via Colombo. Inside it keeps a gilded seventeenth-century ceiling, a balustrade of inlaid marbles and a sixteenth-century Madonna.
Outside, the stucco facade, in two orders, is rococo with a touch of classicism. It sits lower than the street, because the shore was later filled in and raised. Next to it are a bell tower with a spire of two-tone majolica tiles and the confraternity's small building.
In the garden in front remain an obelisk raised by supporters of the Bourbons to commemorate the victory over the Parthenopean Republic of 1799, the arch of an Aragonese fondaco and the sixteenth-century Fontana della Maruzza.
The interior has a single nave with a dome and two chapels on each side. The gilded wooden coffered ceiling, from 1634, has at its center an oval canvas by Battistello Caracciolo, the Glory of the Virgin, among the last works of the Neapolitan master.
The presbytery is closed off by a balustrade of inlaid marbles, with mother-of-pearl and semiprecious stones, designed by Dionisio Lazzari: the inlaid panels show the Miracles of the Madonna. The high altar, the work of Antonio Di Lucca, houses the sixteenth-century panel of the Madonna di Porto Salvo, between the statues of Saint Peter and Saint Paul.
To the right of the altar is the Madonna of the Rosary with the souls in Purgatory by Antonio De Bellis.
The name says it all: in the mid-sixteenth century the sailor Bernardino Belladonna survived a shipwreck. To thank the Madonna, he founded with other sailors and shipowners a confraternity, which in 1554 received the cardinal's permission. The chosen place was unusual: a spit of land, outside the walls, washed by the sea on three sides.
For centuries a palisade protected the church from the waves. In the nineteenth century the shore was filled in and turned into a street. After the Second World War the buildings around it were demolished, left derelict by the bombings and by the explosion of the ship Caterina Costa in the harbor.
The church was closed to the public for decades, and suffered thefts of furnishings. On 31 March 2022, after 42 years, it reopened with a solemn Mass by Archbishop Domenico Battaglia.
Don't miss
• Caracciolo's ceiling.
• The inlaid-marble balustrade.
• The obelisk in the garden.
Did you know?
• The piperno obelisks outside the church were more than one: only one remains.
• The original ceiling, finished in 1564, was built with chains to prevent collapses.
Outside, the stucco facade, in two orders, is rococo with a touch of classicism. It sits lower than the street, because the shore was later filled in and raised. Next to it are a bell tower with a spire of two-tone majolica tiles and the confraternity's small building.
In the garden in front remain an obelisk raised by supporters of the Bourbons to commemorate the victory over the Parthenopean Republic of 1799, the arch of an Aragonese fondaco and the sixteenth-century Fontana della Maruzza.
The interior has a single nave with a dome and two chapels on each side. The gilded wooden coffered ceiling, from 1634, has at its center an oval canvas by Battistello Caracciolo, the Glory of the Virgin, among the last works of the Neapolitan master.
The presbytery is closed off by a balustrade of inlaid marbles, with mother-of-pearl and semiprecious stones, designed by Dionisio Lazzari: the inlaid panels show the Miracles of the Madonna. The high altar, the work of Antonio Di Lucca, houses the sixteenth-century panel of the Madonna di Porto Salvo, between the statues of Saint Peter and Saint Paul.
To the right of the altar is the Madonna of the Rosary with the souls in Purgatory by Antonio De Bellis.
The name says it all: in the mid-sixteenth century the sailor Bernardino Belladonna survived a shipwreck. To thank the Madonna, he founded with other sailors and shipowners a confraternity, which in 1554 received the cardinal's permission. The chosen place was unusual: a spit of land, outside the walls, washed by the sea on three sides.
For centuries a palisade protected the church from the waves. In the nineteenth century the shore was filled in and turned into a street. After the Second World War the buildings around it were demolished, left derelict by the bombings and by the explosion of the ship Caterina Costa in the harbor.
The church was closed to the public for decades, and suffered thefts of furnishings. On 31 March 2022, after 42 years, it reopened with a solemn Mass by Archbishop Domenico Battaglia.
Don't miss
• Caracciolo's ceiling.
• The inlaid-marble balustrade.
• The obelisk in the garden.
Did you know?
• The piperno obelisks outside the church were more than one: only one remains.
• The original ceiling, finished in 1564, was built with chains to prevent collapses.