Inside the parish church of Laurenzana, in an urn, the body of Blessed Egidio is displayed for veneration: it arrived here with the unification of Italy, when the convent in which he had lived was closed. The church is much older than its guest. The first building, dedicated to Santa Maria de Plateis, went up between 1214 and 1222; in 1583 it had to be enlarged because the congregation no longer fitted inside; and the consecration came only in 1723, in the middle of the century that gave it its present shape.
What to see
The façade is asymmetrical and leans against the building next door: a string course divides it into two registers, with the broken-pediment portal and a small window below, three small windows above, one of them walled up. The portal is the one of 1780, made together with the wide chapel of the Blessed Sacrament; the square bell tower, with a round-arched single light on each side and a dome on a drum, had been raised in 1707.
Inside, three naves run between pillars with Tuscan pilaster strips and round arches, above which a moulded entablature carries an attic register of windows. The flat ceiling was painted by the Apulian artist Umberto Colonna. Among the works: the Holy Trinity with Saints attributed to Pietrafesa, the Evangelists and Doctors of the Church frescoed by Pietro da Brienza, and a canvas with the Virgin, the Child, an angel and Saints Gaetano and Filippo Neri.
Visiting
The mother church is one of the two poles around which Laurenzana grew — the other is the castle on the crag — and it stands on the lower part of the route, so you pass it on the way down. Once inside, look first at the presbytery, raised a few steps at the end of the naves and closed by the apse; then turn back and raise your eyes to the ceiling. Between 2010 and 2013 the building was consolidated and restored; at the start of this century the ambo and the altar facing the congregation were added.
Our editors' tip
Look at the floor of the three naves and at the masonry above the arches of the central nave: they were remade. The earthquake of 16 December 1857 partly cracked the brick paving, brought down half the bell tower and destroyed the Loreto chapel completely; by December 1859 nearly all the work had been finished. In the whole town only the church of San Giorgio had come through unharmed.