The basilica of Santa Maria della Natività e San Ciro is a church in Portici, in the metropolitan city of Naples, facing piazza San Ciro. It has a Byzantine-style facade, flanked by two bell towers, both now fitted with clocks.
What to see
The interior has three naves. On the high altar stands out the Nativity of Mary by Luca Giordano, placed in 1666 behind the carved wooden altar; on the second altar on the right is the Conception by Giuseppe Bonito, and the statue of Saint Cyrus is by Ferdinando Sperandeo. Other works by Giordano and Bonito are displayed in the sacristy. The bronze lions and all the sculptures and marble reliefs are by the Portici sculptor Ettore Sannino. When completed in the eighteenth century the church had seven altars, all in precious polychrome marbles, and a dome with eight large windows lighting the presbytery.
The original church was destroyed by the eruption of Vesuvius in 1631; the Universitas of Portici decided to build a new one on land it already owned, known as «lo Petruso», and the work, begun in the spring of 1632, lasted about ten years, with all the citizens contributing money, gold, silver and labour: the new church was inaugurated on 9 May 1642. From 1740 the engineer Domenico Antonio Vaccaro was commissioned to embellish and enlarge it, with a rear block comprising the triumphal arch and the dome and a side one for the sacristy; the works of 1758 lengthened the naves and brought a marble pulpit and the two bell towers, finished in 1767. After a famine and a plague, the population appealed to Pope Pius VI for Saint Cyrus to be declared principal patron of Portici, a request granted in 1776. The rebuilding ordered by the sovereign in 1853 and completed in 1858 erased Vaccaro's decoration, replaced with more modern stuccoes, and a further intervention between 1923 and 1928 disfigured the facade; the belfry cells, pulled down in 1972, were rebuilt in 1997, the year the facade was redone, and the latest restoration, completed on 5 May 2012, repainted the sundial.
Visiting
The basilica is on piazza San Ciro, in Portici; its official website is santuariosanciro.it. The sources consulted give no opening hours or visiting arrangements: check them.
Our editors' tip
A sundial is painted on the right-hand bell tower; the clock mechanism of the left-hand one comes instead from the tower of the old church half destroyed by the eruption.
