The church of San Mauro, also known as a basilica, is the parish church of Casoria, in the archdiocese of Naples. A place of worship dedicated to the abbot Saint Maurus is attested from the late Middle Ages: the first mentions date from 1092.
What to see
Work to rebuild the parish church began in the early seventeenth century and ended in 1621; the monumental façade was built in the course of the nineteenth. Facing northwest, it is divided by a cornice into two registers marked by pilasters: below, the main portal, topped by a small curved pediment, and two side entrances with roundels holding half-length busts; above, a wide window, two niches with statues and another roundel with a bust, under the triangular pediment. Beside it, on a high battered base, rises the square bell tower, whose bell chamber has on each side a round-arched single-light window flanked by double pilasters.
The interior is a Latin cross with a transept, with a single wide nave onto which ten side chapels open. Among the works of merit are three paintings by Domenico Antonio Vaccaro, made between the 1730s and 1740s: the Madonna and Child between Saints Maurus and Januarius, the Visitation and the Immaculate Conception. On the ceiling three canvases by Pietro di Martino tell the story of Saint Maurus: his Glory, the rescue of Placidus from the water, the healing of a dying man. There are also an eighteenth-century baptistery in polychrome marbles, an altarpiece of the Madonna of Monserrat by Giovan Vincenzo D'Onofrio, called il Forlì, from Molise, of the late sixteenth century, a picture of Saint Anne with the Virgin as a child and Saints Maurus and Philip Neri, painted in 1805 by Angelo Mozzillo, and an organ built in 1690.
Visiting
The church is the parish church of Casoria; opening hours and visiting arrangements do not appear in the sources consulted and should be checked with the parish. It was raised to the rank of minor basilica by a decree of 5 January 1999, and the following year, in 2000, the new main portal was made. Attached to the complex is the oratory of the Arciconfraternita di Santa Maria della Pietà e del Buon Consiglio, with several works of art, and the church keeps the relics of the patron saint.
Our editors' tip
Look inside for the town's oldest coats of arms, from the first half of the eighteenth century: they show a golden house, the «casa aurea» from which, by tradition, the name Casoria comes. Another, more problematic hypothesis links it to a «Casa Mauri», that is, to the titular saint himself.
