| The sixteenth-century church was completely remade since 1711. The original structure was designed by Giuseppe Cino, who died in 1722, as written on the frame of the bell tower, still unfinished. The elegant and refined altars designed by Cino were replaced by more articulated ones, designed by Mauro Manieri. The façade of the Church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel is divided in three orders, separated by moulded frames. In the first one there’s the big portal and on its sides there are some niches with the statues of the Holy Saints Angel and Albert and of the prophets Elia and Eliseo, decorated with a festoon of fruit and overflowed by a bowed architrave with statues of angels. A medallion hangs from it and shows the portrait of the Holy Virgin of Carmine. The inner space is shaped around an ellipsoidal base, bordered by three chapels per side; the transept follows, covered externally by white and green plated majolicas; after the transept there is the deep presbytery.
The façade of the Church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel is divided in three orders, separated by moulded frames. In the first there’s the big portal and on its sides there are some niches with the statues of the Holy Saints Angel and Albert and of the prophets Elia and Eliseo, decorated with a festoon of fruit and overflowed by a bowed architrave with statues of angels. A medallion hangs from it and shows the portrait of the Virgin of Carmine. The second order of the façade takes again the compositive rhythms of the lower order, showing them in the central window and in the niches with the sculptures of the Saints Teresa D’Avila and Maddalena dei Pazzi. The last level takes again and knits together the whole compositive structure of the façade. Behind the apse, you can see the squared bell tower. The inner building is characterized by a crossing of straight and curved lines; it presents a variation of the Latin cross plan that has been transformed in a central plan, reproducing a foot, in honor of a biblical tradition. The inner space is shaped around an ellipsoidal base, bordered by three chapels per side; the transept follows, covered externally by white and green plated majolicas; after the transept there is the deep presbytery. The nave altars, designed by Mauro Manieri, who also built the concave major altar, were realized from 1731 to 1737. On the first altar on the right there is a valuable terracotta high relief by the same author, representing St. Gabriel the Archangel. On the opposite side there is the altar of Christ at the Column, with the homonymous wooden statue realized by Genuino in 1618. In the left transept there is the altar of the Purification of the Virgin, realized by Cino as all the altars in the area. Upon this altar, there is an old wooden sculpture of the Virgin of Carmel. Then there are the altars of the Crucified and of the Saints Nicola and Antonio with a XVIIIth century canvas. Behind the major altar there is the wonderful choir, displaying a lot of important portraits realized by Serafino Elmo (the Annunciation, Saint Albert) and Paolo Finoglio (the Annunciation, Saint Ursula). In the right part of the transept there are the altars of Saint Francis of Paola with the statue of the Saint, realized in papier-mâché by Antonio Maccagni in 1856 and the altar of Saint Anna, which presents the canvas of the Virgin with the Child among the Saints Anna, Giuseppe and Gioacchino. |