| Chiesa del Carmine |
| Chiesa della Beata Vergine del Carmelo |
| Church, ruined church, chapel, temple |
| Catholic |
| no |
| In 1577 the Carmelite Fathers, who had arrived in Taranto in 1496, moved to the church of Santa Maria della Misericordia, and dedicated it to Our Lady of Mount Carmel.
Currently it has a single nave with cross bar. In the background is the tabernacle, which dates back to the 1800. It houses the painting of the Virgin of Carmel. In this church the homonymous confraternity keeps the statues of the "Procession of the Mysteries" of Good Friday.
In a special niche on the right side is preserved a piece of the column on which, according to tradition, the prince of the apostles St. Peter's, from Taranto, would have celebrated the Eucharist: the column was kept in the ancient church of S. Peter at the door and, after it was demolished in 1577, was brought to this church, as attested by the marble tablet above the niche wall made by the Archbishop Caracciolo in 1651. |
| The Holy Week in Taranto unfolds in three successive processions. During the early afternoon of Holy Thursday, pairs of brothers (perdùne) set out on a pilgrimage with a slow and swaying gait called (nazzecate), from the Church of the Carmine to the sepulchres in the main church of the city where, especially for this occasion, the altars have been immersed in flowers and funeral ornaments in memory of the Holy Sepulchre of Jesus. Tradition dictates that the sepulchres be visited in odd numbers.
Late Friday afternoon marks the beginning of the Procession of the Mysteries (organised by the Confraternita di Maria SS. Del Carmine), characterized by a series of six groups of statues carried on the participants' shoulders all night long: opened by the players of the troccola accompanies the slow parade of the Gonfalone (black flag and symbol of the Carmine) the Cross of the Mysteries, the statue of Christ in the Garden, Christ at the Column, the Hecce Homo, the Fall, the Crucifix, the Holy Shroud, Dead Jesus and Addolorata. Accompanied by funeral marches through the quarter, the procession returns to the Church of the Carmine only at dawn of the morning after when, in a moving and long-awaited ceremony, the troccola player approaches the main door of the church and knocks three times with thebordone (the staff that he carries in his left hand), finally entering the church amidst the applause of the people. |