Basilica di Santa Maria della Sanità

It is located in the popular Sanità district and holds the statue of the Saint Vincenzo Ferrer. It was built to the design of father Giuseppe Nuvolo in 1602-1613, on the site of the St. Gaudioso's Catacombs. The facade with stucco decorations from the early eighteenth century, is flanked by a tall bell tower built between 1612 and 1614. Externally hits the tiled yellow and green dome. The circular plant is made up of a Greek cross and a raised presbytery. The interior has vast and complex articulation of volumes: the Greek cross is inscribed in a square. Numerous works of art, including contemporary, present along the nave and side chapels. The first chapel on the right, dedicated to St. Nicholas, has a fresco of the Madonna of Health dated between the fifth and sixth centuries, that is the oldest known image of Mary in Naples. In the fourth chapel on the right, dedicated to Our Lady of the Rosary, there is the large altarpiece by Giovanni Bernardino Azzolino (1612), contained in a cona of carved and gilded wood from the first half of the seventeenth century. Special pincer staircase leads to the presbytery, dominated by the main altar in polychrome marbles of the second half of the eighteenth century. In the apse there is the Madonna of Health by Michelangelo Naccherino, the early seventeenth century. Below the presbytery is the entrance to the early Christian basilica, decorated with stucco from Arcangelo Guglielmelli and Cristoforo Schor (1708). The frescoes on the ten side altars, depicting stories of martyrs, are the work by the painter Bernardino Fera. From here you pass to the Sacresty, decorated in "graffiti" by Giovan Battista Di Pino (1625) and to the elliptical Cloister, painted by Di Pino with scenes from the history of the Dominican Order. St. Gaudioso's Catacombs, with frescoes of the seventeenth and eighteenth century, are entered through a gate located under the presbytery.