Chiesa del Crocifisso
This Church was built over the site of an ancient aedicule containing a fresco of the Crucifixion, painted by Rapestingo. This fresco was thought to be miracolous and proof of this may be seen from the great many votive offerings that can still be seen today on the ancient wall protrunding from the Chapel of the Virgin of the Seven Sorrows.
It is said that the blessed oil was placed on Holy Thursday at the foot of the image, then poured into small phials and distributed to passers-by. Tradition has it that Venetian sailors used this oil during a storm and the sea became calm. The design and supervision of the building work were assigned to the painter Carlo Rosa who "translated his sense of pictoral space into real architectural space" projecting beforehand at the designing stage the spaces that would be given over to pictorial works.
The building was constructed between 1664 and 1671, the year it was consecrated by Bishop Tommaso Acquaviva d'Aragona; the resultant work was a suburban church with a characteristic architectural morphology inspired by the typology of the "trulli", traditional rustic constructions in Puglia built with stone walls and covered by domes finished off with "chiancarelle".
The facade is divided horizontally into two sections by a large cornice that juts out considerably, held up by two pilasters, and terminates with a semicircular pediment that rests on half columns, tapered in the reverse. The doorway, encased between ridged frames, is surmounted by a voluted gable.
To the South rises the quadrangular bell rower with two bell chambers pyramidal roof. The Church, was build by "licentia" from the Bishop and probably did not exceed the dimensions of thirty palms by four" (for the sides), or 7.50 m. for each side.The hall style interior is composed of two squared spaces: the first is covered by a cross vault, the other by a dome. In the South side the ancient wall is still visible, frescoed by Rapestingo. The pictorial decorations are only partly attributable to Carlo Rosa: the angels in the pinnacles, the lunettes depicting the Garden of Gethsemane, the "Flagellation" and the "Schiovazione". The rest of the frescoes inside were painted by his workshop assistants (Gliri, Altobello arid Dr Filippis) and in later interventions: the stories of Jonah, Isaiah and the Patriarchs, scenes in the dome showing Saints from the New Testament and the History of the Church were painteed by the canon Vitantonio De Filippis.
This complex, unique throughout the whole of Puglia for its architectural morphology, has been included in the 17th century itineraries for the South of Italy.
