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tour n. 2

From Piazza Miraglia to Piazza Dante
Women musicians, painters and militants  

 

Stages and women characters of the tour

 
 
icona itour 2
  • The S. Pietro a Maiella Academy of Music: Emilia Gubitosi, Ebe Stignano
  • Piazza Bellini: Libreria delle Donne - Women's Bookshop
  • Academy of Fine Arts: Artemisia Gentileschi, Maria Palliggiano, Maria Padula
  • Palazzo Ruffo di Bagnara Mensa dei Bambini Proletari: Leonilde Puoti, Giuseppina Guacci Nobilr Le Nemesiache
  • Piazza Dante
 
 

Tour guide

Our second tour begins at the S.Pietro a Maiella Academy of Music and goes through Piazza Bellini and Via Costantinopoli to Piazza Dante. This area became a kind of "centre of the arts" of Naples and we shall follow the careeres of women who livedin the 17th and 18th centuries whose enthusiasmsand activities were in many different ways related to the area.
We begin our tour in Piazza Miraglia, from where, to the left, we can see the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore also called La Pietrasanta (13), built in the 6th century on the remains of a Roman building whicih practised the Diana moon cult. On the site of its original churchyard stands the bell tower, which is the only remaining part of the original church and one of the most important and rarest examples of the medieval town. The highest part of the bell tower consists of double brick-arched openings supported by marble columns, while in the centre there are zoomorphic marble sculptures which rise from the baseof the brickwork. At the base of the bell tower are marble decorations in imperial style.
We go to the right, where we find a small Renaissance chapel (14) attributed to the Sienese architect Francesco di Giorgo Martini and the monk Fra Giovanni Giocondo of Verona, both of whom worked for the Aragonese court; this was commissioned in 1492 by Giovanni Pontanoas a funeral monument to his wife Adriana Sassone who died in 1490. The Chapel is constructed entirely in 'piperno'; it is rectangular in shape and the façade has fluted Corinthian pilasters supporting a trabeation.
The Church of the Cross of Lucca (15), built in 1537together with the annexed Monastery of the Carmelite Nuns, is dedicated to the venerated Crucifix in the Cathedral of Lucca. From 1643 to 1654 Francesco Antonio Picchiatti enlarged the monastery and built the cloisters.Picchiatti also devised the interior decorations. The church was built between 1653and 1678 on a plan by Cosimo Fanzago. The façade is in two parts: the lower part is the whole curve of an arch framing the entrance with a fragmented tympanum executed by Pietro Barberiisin 1675; the second part consists of two volutes accompanying two couples of smooth pilasters framing a large window surmounted by a triangular tympanum. The interior of the church is on a central plan; there is a dome above a high tympanum which creates an unusual sense of space. There are small side chapels, four angular chapels with cloisetr vaults and the choir area. The church is the only surviving part of the monastery complex. At the beginning of the 20th century, the Carmelite and the Sapienza convents were demolished to make room for the building of the university hospitals. The Croce di Lucca might have suffered the same fate, but was saved by the intervention of intellectuals. But the church was reduced in size by seven metres on the side of the apse, and the 18th-century altar and two paintings by Nicola Maria Rossi were transferred elsewhere. Looking towards the left of Piazza Luigi Miraglia, the monumental complex of S. Pietro a Maiella can be seen.