"Esoteric Naples"

There are several ways to “feel “ Naples, and one of the most attractive ones is without any doubt the walking down into the underground.

There’s a real “parallel town” underneath, which was dug-out through the centuries into the tufa rock for chilometers and chilometers and got developed together with the one on the surface,creating a connection between the world of the light and the one of the darkness, in a neverending dialogue with the death.All the alleyways, the courtyards, the crypts, even the sewer of the regular town were considered to be “legal gates”  opening  towards the hereafter, so that the neapolitan underground became the border between the two different worlds.The relationship between the two worlds is still recognizable by visiting the old town: the sacred atmosphere of the top, due to the  presence  of hundreds of catholic churches, is strictly related to the profane underworld, where the cult of the “souls of the purgatory” is still followed by thousands of citizens.
 

Santa Maria del Purgatorio

The three bronze skulls on the railings (a fourth was stolen in the 1950s), and its popular name, cap'e morte ('death's head'), are clues to why this 17th-century church has such a hold on Neapolitans. This was the centre of a death cult, in which people would adopt and look after the cache of skulls in the hypogeum (underground chamber). The building of the church was financed by a confraternity of noblemen, founded in 1604, who originally collected alms for celebrating masses for the soul of the dead. They collected so much money to build even a church, planned by Cosimo Fanzago, whose works began in the 1650's and ended in the following century. Inside, a winged skull and crossbones overlook the altar, and there are several Baroque paintings by Massimo Stanzione (Madonna with the Souls of the Purgatory) and by Luca Giordano (The death of Saint Alessio), as well as one of the masterpieces by the sculptor Andrea Falcone, the Tomb of Giulio Mastrilli, one of the main benefactors of the confraternity.Underneath the church, the hypogeum still contains a pile of venerated bones.The souls that were worshipped were those of anonymous people, who were considered intermediaries between the mortal and the divine. Souls were worshipped not just at Purgatorio ad Arco, but also in the church of S. Pietro ad Aram as well as at the cemetery of Fontanelle.


San Pietro ad Aram

The church was built on the site where tradition holds that Saint Peter, during his stay in Naples, baptized Saint Candida and Saint Aspreno (whom Peter named the city's first bishop). Its name "ad Aram" is in fact derived from the altar on which Peter celebrated the rite. Originally, then, this was a religious shrine, founded for the preservation of relics. The present building is much later. Its reconstruction dates back to work by Pietro di Marino in the second half of the seventeenth century. The two cloisters of the monastic complex, one of which was probably built during the Angevin period, were destroyed by urban renewal at the end of the nineteenth century. It was on this occasion that the capitals from the cloister were moved to the church of Saint Aspreno. In the Thirties, paintings and sculptures that had originally belonged to various Neapolitan churches, and were collected in the Royal Picture Gallery of the National Museum, were transferred to the church. Worth pointing out is a sculpted group of the Madonna delle Grazie by Giovan Domenico D'Auria and Annibale Caccavello.
In the crypt of this church the practise of worshipping the souls of the purgatory still survives. The cult was officially banned in the sixties, but the problem was bypassed by using a trick: the niches containing the skulls got closed, so that the human remains were not visible any longer; in the meantime, it was still possible to stand near the bones and write any kind of request on the wooden panels used to shut the niches.


San Severo Chapel

A visit to the spectacular baroque San Severo Chapel is not to miss.
The masterpiece is to be found in the statue of the Veiled Christ by Giuseppe Sammartino, a real example of virtuosity in sculptoring marble; besides, many inventions and anatomical machines are visible in the chapel, all underlining the interest and the involvement of its owner, the prince of Sansevero, in alchemy and Freemasonry.
  
 
 

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