Description
The church of Santa Maria della Croce is probably among the oldest churches in Campobasso, in a lane of the historic center next to Palazzo Mazzarotta, home of the Samnite Museum. It was the church of the Crusaders, one of the two rival confraternities that shaped the city's history.
The neoclassical facade has three portals, one for each aisle; above the central one opens a large rose window. On the right rises the bell tower.
Inside, the plan is a Latin cross. Where the nave meets the transept rises the dome, pierced by eight windows that fill the church with light. In the presbytery, a Baroque marble altar from 1760.
In the three niches of the presbytery stand the statues of the Immaculate Conception, Saint John and Saint Joseph, by Paolo Saverio Di Zinno, the Campobasso sculptor who invented the Misteri machines.
The left aisle ends in the chapel of Our Lady of Sorrows: the wooden statue of the Madonna is 19th-century, Neapolitan school, and the vault was frescoed by Amedeo Trivisonno in 1932. In the same aisle is a 16th-century wooden crucifix.
In the right aisle, the chapel of the Sacred Heart has three niches with Saint Blaise, the Sacred Heart and Saint Lucy. One of the two side chapels also holds a Dead Christ, remade in plaster in 1954.
The church began as a simple oratory, perhaps as early as the Norman period, built by the faithful of the confraternity of the Crusaders, who came from the common people. Their rivals, the Trinitarians, came from the city's nobility.
When the inhabitants moved down from the hill toward the lower part of the city, the oratory soon became the most important church, so much so that it gave its name to one of the gates in the walls. Porta Santa Maria della Croce was demolished in 1864.
Earthquakes have changed its appearance several times: the present layout dates from the 15th century.
The neoclassical facade has three portals, one for each aisle; above the central one opens a large rose window. On the right rises the bell tower.
Inside, the plan is a Latin cross. Where the nave meets the transept rises the dome, pierced by eight windows that fill the church with light. In the presbytery, a Baroque marble altar from 1760.
In the three niches of the presbytery stand the statues of the Immaculate Conception, Saint John and Saint Joseph, by Paolo Saverio Di Zinno, the Campobasso sculptor who invented the Misteri machines.
The left aisle ends in the chapel of Our Lady of Sorrows: the wooden statue of the Madonna is 19th-century, Neapolitan school, and the vault was frescoed by Amedeo Trivisonno in 1932. In the same aisle is a 16th-century wooden crucifix.
In the right aisle, the chapel of the Sacred Heart has three niches with Saint Blaise, the Sacred Heart and Saint Lucy. One of the two side chapels also holds a Dead Christ, remade in plaster in 1954.
The church began as a simple oratory, perhaps as early as the Norman period, built by the faithful of the confraternity of the Crusaders, who came from the common people. Their rivals, the Trinitarians, came from the city's nobility.
When the inhabitants moved down from the hill toward the lower part of the city, the oratory soon became the most important church, so much so that it gave its name to one of the gates in the walls. Porta Santa Maria della Croce was demolished in 1864.
Earthquakes have changed its appearance several times: the present layout dates from the 15th century.