Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
pleasures. Repentant in his later years, he returned to Naples and joined the priesthood, his
attempt to free himself from sin represented in Queirolo's masterpiece.
Even more poignant is Antonio Corradini's
Pudicizia
, whose veiled female figure pays
tribute to Raimondo's mother, Cecilia Gaetani d'Aquila d'Aragona. Raimondo was only
11 months old when she died, and the statue's lost gaze and broken plaque represent a life
cruelly cut short.
The life of the chapel's original polychrome marble flooring was also cut short after a
major collapse involving the chapel and the neighbouring Palazzo dei di Sangro in 1889.
Designed by Francesco Celebrano, fragments of it survive in the passageway leading off
from the chapel's right side. The passageway leads to a staircase, at the bottom of which
you'll find two meticulously preserved human arterial systems - one of a man, the other
of a woman. Debate still circles the models: Are the arterial systems real or reproduc-
tions? And if they are real, just how was such an incredible state of preservation
achieved? More than two centuries on, the mystery surrounding the alchemist prince lives
on.
Basilica di Santa Chiara
( 081 1957 5915;
www.monasterodisantachiara.eu
;
Via Benedetto Croce; nuns'
cloisters adult/reduced €5/3.50; basilica 7.30am-1pm & 4.30-8pm; cloisters & mu-
seum 9.30am-5.30pm Mon-Sat, 10am-2.30pm Sun, last entry 30min before closing ;
Dante)
Vast, Gothic and cleverly deceptive, this mighty
basilica
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is actually a 20th-century recreation of Gagliardo Primario's 14th-century original,
severely damaged in World War II. The pièce de résistance, however, is the basilica's ad-
joining
cloisters
, lavished with wonderfully colourful 17th-century majolica tiles and
frescoes.
While the Angevin porticoes date back to the 14th century, the cloisters took on their
current look in the 18th century thanks to the work of Domenico Antonio Vaccaro. The
walkways that divide the central garden of lavender and citrus trees are lined with 72
ceramic-tiled octagonal columns connected by benches. Painted by Donato e Giuseppe
Massa, the colourful tiles depict various rural scenes, from hunting to vignettes of peasant
life. The four internal walls are covered with 17th-century frescoes of Franciscan tales.
Adjacent to the cloisters, a small and elegant
museum
of mostly ecclesiastical props
also features the excavated ruins of a 1st-century spa complex, including a remarkably
well-preserved
laconicum
(sauna).
CHURCH, MUSEUM
