Naples - San Domenico Plague Column

San Domenico Spire

In the square in front of San Domenico Maggiore is the San Domenico Spire. Sometimes referred to as the plague obelisk, though there is more than one plague obelisk in Naples.  Built over a period of 70 years beginning in 1658, it refers to the plague of 1656. I read that it commemorates St. Domenico who interceded on behalf of Naples by being miraculous and performing the miracle of making the plague go away by brining a freak snowstorm to town.

The carving is rather restrained, only four giant crowned cartouches and four cherubs. Only four cherubs? No idea how the designer could live with himself with only four cherubs. The shaft of the obelisk has bas relief grotesques and the whole ensemble is topped off with a bronze statue of San Domenico doing Dominican things. 

It makes quite a spectacular exclamation mark along the Via Benedetto Croce, which we continued to traverse on our way to the Piazzetta del Nilo. Which is just as it sounds, the little Nile Piazza

Naples - San Domenico Maggiore

San Domenico Maggiore

San Domenico Maggiore- The exterior has an almost Moorish, southern Spain look to it. The sun bleached brick with tiny windows and the trefoil crenellations add to the illusion. The interior is quite elaborate but in the gothic manner rather than the fanciful baroque that abounds in most Naples churches. This is due to a restoration project in the 19th century to remove the baroque decoration and return the church to its Gothic austerity. Which in Neapolitan terms means lots of gilt pointy arches and marble clustered columns, golden capitals and a coffered ceiling with a profusion of carving and indeed more gilt.

There has been a church and monastery on this site for a very long time. In the 13th century it was handed over to the Dominican monks and after a while they decided they were in need of a bigger church. The result you see before you was completed in 1324.

Once the attached monastery was the seat of the ever migratory University of Naples and Thomas Aquinas taught theology here from 1272 until he began his deadly journey to the Council of Lyon in 1274.

Naples - Gesu Nuovo

Gesu Nuovo: Consecrated by the Jesuits in 1601this is a rather unique church in Naples. 

The facade is fascinating. It looks unfinished, as if it is lacking a pediment. The giant c-scrolls in piperno stone seem prepared to support something a little more grand than nothing.  The strange pyramidal ashlar work on the facade is, well strange, compared to the fluid and flamboyant architecture that abounds in Naples. The stone is very dark and gives the building a prison like air. If it were not of the three marble trimmed baroque portals and the same number of marble trimmed baroque windows inserted into the facade it would be exceedingly bleak. The central portal is quite a work of art with only two cherubs and two reclining figures, and a cartouche and some scroll work and some bass reliefs. 

The strange apperance is apparently from the fact that the church was built as a palace in the fourteenth century. Not sure exactly how it became a church. But I think that anything left in Naples for long enough will become a church. 

On an interesting note, we saw a palace in Rome that had very similar pyramidal ashlar work and the Faceted Palace at the Kremlin in Moscow (designed around the same time by an Italian architect) has much the same finish.  I remember reading when I was there that the architects that had worked on the Kermlin had come from Italy. It is very possible that they had seen this building.