Cappella di San Giovanni Battista

The original church was apparently built in the last decades of the 1600s, by the will of the faithful devotees of the Holy Forerunner: it had a wooden roof, two entrances and two rooms to accommodate pilgrims and the poor. Being decadent by the middle of the eighteenth century, it was restored at the expense of the Brotherhood, which expanded by adding other altars, and covered with a barrel vault with lunettes. The rooms of the old hospice were used as stables and hospitals for the care of sick brothers. The remains of this building are still visible in the alley behind the Chapel. Originally, the space behind the church housed a small cemetery. Inside, among the altars of St. Vincent and the SS. Rocco and Francis Saverio, opens an attractive cave that houses the statue of the Virgin of Lourdes.

(From a text of Prof. Angelo Cappello)