The duomo of Benevento, officially the metropolitan cathedral of Santa Maria de Episcopio, is the bishop's seat of the archdiocese and the city's cathedral; it faces the square of the same name, with the archbishop's palace behind it.
What to see
It was the first Christian temple in the city, rising in the centre of the ancient Roman city: where the church now stands was the Capitol. The oldest foundation dates from the early seventh century; today's dimensions came with the eighth-century rebuilding, prompted by Duke Arechis II, which turned the old church into the crypt of the new. Around 830 Prince Sicone enlarged the cathedral to three naves with marble columns in classical style; in the second half of the tenth century Benevento became an archbishopric, the first in southern Italy, and façade and bell tower came in the thirteenth century. Reconsecrated in 1473 after an earthquake, the duomo was later given Baroque forms, until Cardinal Orsini, the future Benedict XIII, had it redone after the quake of 1688, reconsecrating it on 26 May 1692. Between 12 and 14 September 1943 it was almost totally destroyed by Allied bombing, aimed at the Vanvitelli bridge: the façade was saved by a strengthening operation. The rebuilding, with the architect Paolo Rossi De Paoli, began in 1950 and lasted a decade, plus five years for the furnishings; the duomo was inaugurated on 28 June 1965.
Of the rebuilt duomo there remain the Romanesque façade and the bell tower, in white marble, built between the third quarter of the twelfth century and the end of the thirteenth, Pisan in taste like the architecture of Capitanata, and the crypt of the primitive church, with remains of fourteenth-century frescoes; everything else is of the twentieth century. In the archivolt of the main portal remain fragments of reliefs with two facing sea monsters. In the fourteenth century the interior had been enriched with two ambos by the Franciscan Nicola di Monteforte. The recovery works, from 2005 to 2012, were interrupted several times by the finding of archaeological remains, almost all of the late Roman period and linked to the pagan-Egyptian cult: they have been made visitable by raising the floor by about thirty centimetres, and the cathedral reopened on 11 October 2012.
Visiting
The duomo is in piazza Duomo, in Benevento, with the archbishop's palace behind it. The sources consulted give no opening hours or visiting arrangements: check them.
Our editors' tip
The bronze door, damaged by the war, was restored in Rome and handed back only in 1999, fifty-six years after the bombing of 1943.
