| The church of S. Matthew was built under Bishop Mancusio around 1090 to serve the inhabitants of neighboring hamlets in Sagina, St. Nicholas and Janus, who had taken refuge in the city and that had a concession.
It was rebuilt in 1628 after a fire. It was restored in the years 1883 and 1964. In 1891 the nearby church of St. Nicholas ceased to be parish and joined with St. Matthew, the union was formed the Abbey curated entitled to the two Saints.
The church is very simple on the outside, and composed inside of a nave, to which were added later, five altars of various styles. On these altars are preserved many valuable paintings, such as the table of a Byzantine icon of Our Lady of Constantinople, attributed the Cretan artist Angelo Bizamano (1518-1532), commissioned by Bishop Sifola and placed on the second altar on the left (the icon is adorned with a baroque frame of carved golden fire, and is located in a baroque altar dedicated to the Madonna herself); a painting of the Madonna and Child with Saints Dominic, Nicholas and Matthew, by Corrado Giaquinto from Molfetta preserved in the sacristy (eighteenth century); a painting of penitent St. Peter by Jerome Palumbo from Bisceglie (nineteenth century); a crucified Jesus from the Church of Purgatory attributed to an anonymous author of the seventeenth century; a painting with the SS. Nicholas and Ignatius of Loyola School of Naples in the eighteenth century. |