Carbonara di Nola

The oldest church in the village is dedicated to the physician saints Cosmas and Damian: it is Romanesque, with three naves, and is thought to have been raised over a pagan temple. Of the centuries of alterations it has been through, only the central body of the original design has survived, while beside it stands a bell tower of uncertain origin that looks more like an old watchtower or signalling tower than a belfry. The church of the Santissima Annunziata is sixteenth-century instead, and keeps a panel painted by Marco Mele; the church of Sant'Anna belongs to the twentieth century. Of the eighteenth-century church of the Beata Vergine dei Sette Dolori only ruins are left: it was damaged by the earthquake of 1980 and has never been raised again.

The most eloquent monument stands along corso Vittorio Emanuele, the main street, and it is the one to the war dead. It was built on exactly the spot where the house of the Fasci di combattimento had stood: the same ground, one memory in place of the other. For the rest Carbonara keeps the look of the old rural borgo, on the slopes of Monte Saro, on the boundary with the province of Avellino, and it has grown so close to the comune of Domicella that today the two form a single built-up area. One of the oldest buildings is Palazzo Santorelli, which has belonged to the family of that name ever since it was built and passes from one generation to the next.