children itineraries

In one of the narrow streets spreading from Spaccanapoli, via De Sanctis, you can visit the Sansevero Chapel. This palace dates from the first half of the 16^th century, but it was radically transformed in the 18^th century by Prince Raimondo di Sangro, a legendary figure of alchemist and erudite about whom there are many mysterious anectodes, partly derived from popular imagination, partly from the undoubted originality of his character. This chapel was the burial place for the members of the de Sangro family, princes of Sansevero, and Prince Raimondo di Sangro planned its restoration calling the most illustrious artists and sculptors of the time. The Prince planned a great number of allegorical sculptures which were part of a single overall project for decorating the chapel but were sculpted by different artists as Corradini, Sammartino, Queirolo. The most admired work of art in the chapel is the Veiled Christ by the sculptor Sammartino, impressive for its beauty at once sublime and human.  You and your children will be amazed by the perfection of this statues, which astonishing reality in some details  like the transparency of the veils and the shrouds, the net in the “Disenchantment” group, arouse several legends about the methods that were used in order to attain such a faithfulness to reality. For instance, stories went that the veil of the Christ was not carved in marble but was a real shroud magically petrified. In the cellar of the chapel are displayed the so called “anatomic machines”. They are the reproduction made of coloured wax and iron threads  of the blood vessel system of two human bodies (of a male and of a pregnant woman). In fact the Prince was a medicine scholar, also, and these reproductions had the aim to show the investigations he had made in order to have a better knowledge of human physiology. But the people, that suspected the Prince dissected dead bodies, charged him with necromancy and stories went that the corpses in the cellars were those of two servants horribly tortured for his devilish experiments. Children like being a little bit frightened and so they will be fascinated by this mysterious reproductions and will surely ask you “Are they real people?”  showing the same wonder that felt the simple people three centuries ago looking at the complexity of the human body.

By Annarita