The cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta is the cathedral of Nola and of its diocese, in Piazza Duomo. What you see is a modern construction: it was built between 1869 and the beginning of the twentieth century to a design by the architect Nicola Breglia, in neo-Renaissance style, and opened in May 1909. It was necessary because on the night of 13 February 1861 a fire had completely destroyed the old Gothic church with a nave and two aisles, which went back to the end of the fourteenth century and had been built after the seat of the diocese was moved from Cimitile to Nola. In March 1954 Pope Pius XII raised it to a minor basilica.
What to see
The façade is preceded by a portico of five arches, on six marble columns with travertine capitals. Beside the church stands the bell tower, whose construction goes back to the twelfth century and which an earthquake partly destroyed in 1805. Two other small bell towers close the façade, and in them are placed the statues of the two principal saints of Nola, St Felix and St Paulinus.
The interior is a Latin cross, with a nave and two aisles divided by granite columns, a coffered ceiling and a dome over the transept. At the centre of the nave ceiling is a canvas by Salvatore Postiglione with the Apotheosis of St Felix. The most important chapel is that of the Immaculate, entered from the transept: it is the only one saved from the old cathedral, dates from the sixteenth century and is decorated in Renaissance style. From the transept you also go down to the crypt, a Greek cross, dedicated to St Felix.
Visiting
Opening times and the times of services should be checked with the cathedral.
Our editors' tip
Two things come from long before the fire. Set into the wall at the entrance to the crypt is a jewelled cross of the fifth century. And the wooden statues of the Immaculate, St Paulinus and St Felix, in their chapels, are the ones that escaped the blaze of 1861: Iacopo Bonavita carved them in the seventeenth century.
