Description
The Church of Santa Maria la Nova is a large Franciscan church in the historic center of Naples, near Piazza Giovanni Bovio and the port. Founded in the thirteenth century and rebuilt in the late sixteenth, it has a gilded ceiling with forty-six paintings, a Baroque chapel by great painters and, in the cloister beside it, a tomb that has set Dracula hunters dreaming.
The interior is a Latin cross with a single nave and seven chapels on each side. Your eyes go straight up: the gilded wooden ceiling, made between 1598 and 1603, has forty-six panels by various artists, with the Glory of the Name of Mary by Francesco Curia at the center.
The other two large panels are the Assumption of the Virgin by Girolamo Imparato and the Coronation of the Virgin by Fabrizio Santafede. Below, in the window zone, Belisario Corenzio painted the Articles of the Creed.
The second chapel on the left is the Chapel of San Giacomo della Marca: it holds the saint's remains and is enriched with works by Luca Giordano, Massimo Stanzione and Giovanni Balducci. In the seventh chapel, two putti are attributed by tradition to Luca Giordano as a child.
The high altar was designed by Cosimo Fanzago in 1632-1633. On the arch is a thirteenth-century Madonna and Child, painted on copper and coming from the old church. In the apse, Corenzio worked for about twenty years, from 1603 to 1621.
Outside, the façade is austere, tilted about ten degrees from the nave, because it had to line up with the square. Inside the right wall is a spiral staircase. The bell tower rises on the ancient Torre Maestra, which watched over the port.
It all began with a castle. To build the Maschio Angioino, Charles of Anjou had a church of the Friars Minor torn down and in 1279 gave them a plot near a watchtower. The new church was called, simply, "la Nova".
Earthquakes and the explosion of a powder magazine in 1587 left it in bad shape. It was rebuilt in three years, from 1596 to 1599, reusing part of the old one. Money was short, but a miracle helped: the healing of a cripple, attributed to the painting of the Madonna delle Grazie.
In the smaller cloister is the tomb of Matteo Ferrillo, from 1499, with a carved dragon. In 2014 some scholars claimed that Vlad III of Wallachia, that is Dracula, rests there. Others point out that the dragon is only the Ferrillo family crest.
Don't miss
• The wooden ceiling.
• The Chapel of San Giacomo della Marca.
• Fanzago's altar.
• The tomb of Matteo Ferrillo.
Did you know?
• According to tradition, the two putti in the seventh chapel on the left were painted by Luca Giordano at the age of eight, in place of his father.
• In the Dracula theory, the two sphinxes on the tomb allude to Thebes, "Tepe", that is Țepeș. For the critics, Țepeș instead comes from a Turkish word meaning "impaler".
The interior is a Latin cross with a single nave and seven chapels on each side. Your eyes go straight up: the gilded wooden ceiling, made between 1598 and 1603, has forty-six panels by various artists, with the Glory of the Name of Mary by Francesco Curia at the center.
The other two large panels are the Assumption of the Virgin by Girolamo Imparato and the Coronation of the Virgin by Fabrizio Santafede. Below, in the window zone, Belisario Corenzio painted the Articles of the Creed.
The second chapel on the left is the Chapel of San Giacomo della Marca: it holds the saint's remains and is enriched with works by Luca Giordano, Massimo Stanzione and Giovanni Balducci. In the seventh chapel, two putti are attributed by tradition to Luca Giordano as a child.
The high altar was designed by Cosimo Fanzago in 1632-1633. On the arch is a thirteenth-century Madonna and Child, painted on copper and coming from the old church. In the apse, Corenzio worked for about twenty years, from 1603 to 1621.
Outside, the façade is austere, tilted about ten degrees from the nave, because it had to line up with the square. Inside the right wall is a spiral staircase. The bell tower rises on the ancient Torre Maestra, which watched over the port.
It all began with a castle. To build the Maschio Angioino, Charles of Anjou had a church of the Friars Minor torn down and in 1279 gave them a plot near a watchtower. The new church was called, simply, "la Nova".
Earthquakes and the explosion of a powder magazine in 1587 left it in bad shape. It was rebuilt in three years, from 1596 to 1599, reusing part of the old one. Money was short, but a miracle helped: the healing of a cripple, attributed to the painting of the Madonna delle Grazie.
In the smaller cloister is the tomb of Matteo Ferrillo, from 1499, with a carved dragon. In 2014 some scholars claimed that Vlad III of Wallachia, that is Dracula, rests there. Others point out that the dragon is only the Ferrillo family crest.
Don't miss
• The wooden ceiling.
• The Chapel of San Giacomo della Marca.
• Fanzago's altar.
• The tomb of Matteo Ferrillo.
Did you know?
• According to tradition, the two putti in the seventh chapel on the left were painted by Luca Giordano at the age of eight, in place of his father.
• In the Dracula theory, the two sphinxes on the tomb allude to Thebes, "Tepe", that is Țepeș. For the critics, Țepeș instead comes from a Turkish word meaning "impaler".