What to See in Torre Annunziata: Attractions & Sights

More places of interest

Chiesa di San Michele Arcangelo

The church of San Michele Arcangelo stands in the Rovigliano district of Torre Annunziata. It grew out of a plan by the engineer Michelangelo Cattori, who on 24 July 1903 proposed to the town that he build, at his own expense, a workers' district around his factory, between the Ferriere del Vesuvio ironworks, the railway to Castellammare and the river Sarno. The plan was approved in 1905, but partly because of the Italo-Turkish War and the First World War only the church and 14 buildings were completed. The church was designed by the Milanese Erminio Dones.
What to see
The church stands where a small church for the people of the fishing village had existed since the thirteenth century, and it is built of reinforced concrete, used here for the first time in Campania, and perhaps in Italy, for a building of this kind. The style is eclectic, recalling Romanesque and Gothic: the façade has blind arcading, sculptures and rose windows, with floral and geometric friezes. Inside, the three naves each end in a cylindrical apse; the central one is framed by large columns with Corinthian capitals.
On the apse wall are traces of a fresco, probably from the medieval church, partly hidden by the papier-mâché statue of Saint Michael, from the mid-twentieth century, set on a tall pedestal. The marble altar dates from 1970, and the ambo is wooden.
Visiting
Blessed and opened for worship in 1914, the church was given to the Sanctuary of Pompeii in 1932 and has been a parish since 1955. In 2015 two bronze reliefs of the Madonna and Child were stolen, then found by the carabinieri and returned. Mass times and opening hours should be checked with the parish.
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The commission reached Dones through Pietro Annoni, owner of the firm Cattori had hired for the works: the two knew each other because they belonged to the same rowing club.
Piazza Ernesto Cesaro

Piazza Ernesto Cesaro, also called piazza Santa Teresa, is a trapezoid-shaped square in Torre Annunziata. Since 1911 it has borne the name of the mathematician Ernesto Cesaro, who died in 1906 in the waters near the harbour while trying to save his son Manlio from drowning. The popular name comes from the church of Santa Teresa di Gesù, built in 1639 with the convent that closes the square on its north side.
What to see
In 1506 the area was called largo di Casa Pisacane and belonged to Prince Piccolomini of Monteleone; in 1600 it was a sloping open space called Boscariello, perhaps for the broom and pines growing there. In 1846 the friars, to whom the square had been given, marked it off with crosses along the Strada Regia delle Calabrie, but the town council left them only half the space. In 1860 it became piazza dei Comizi, in memory of the plebiscite for Italian unity, passed to the town and no trace of the crosses remained.
From 1896 to 1929 a fountain with a basin in Vesuvian stone stood in the middle, brought from piazza dell'Annunziata; it was removed to make room for the First World War memorial, unveiled in 1930.
Visiting
The square is also bound up with local devotion: according to tradition, during the eruption of Vesuvius in 1944 it was here that a ray of sunlight lit up the face of the Madonna della Neve carried in procession, and in 1959 the mayor consecrated the town to the Heart of Mary here.
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On the square, in Palazzo Amodio, a branch of the Russian consulate in Naples was based from the late nineteenth century until 1917: the pasta factories of Torre Annunziata regularly bought the Russian grain known as Taganrog.
Basilica dell'Ave Gratia Plena

The pontifical basilica of Maria Santissima della Neve, also known as the church of Ave Gratia Plena or of the Santissima Annunziata, is the main church of Torre Annunziata, in the diocese of Nola; Pope John Paul II raised it to a minor basilica in 1979. Its origins go back to 19 September 1319, when Charles of Anjou, regent for his father Robert, granted four local notables a wooded plot along the coast to build a chapel dedicated to the Annunciation and a hospice for travellers. Around the chapel and a coastal tower raised by the Orsini of Nola against raiders grew the village of Torre dell'Annunciata.
What to see
In 1448, with the old chapel in ruins, the feudal lord Nicola d'Alagno founded the present church in a more sheltered inland spot and called in the Celestine friars, for whom he built a monastery; in 1498 Nicola II d'Alagno gave the church and monastery to the order, and the priory became an abbey. In 1807, with the Napoleonic suppressions, the Celestines were expelled and the complex became a parish.
The church houses the icon of the Madonna della Neve, a terracotta bust of the Virgin holding the Child on her left arm. According to tradition it was found on the morning of a 5 August in the later fourteenth century by local fishermen, inside a wooden chest floating near the rock of Rovigliano; the title was chosen because that day commemorates the miracle of the snow that fell on the Esquiline in Rome. During a restoration in 1872 it was found that the terracotta image had been covered with a protective canvas.
Visiting
On the evening of 21 January 1946 the explosion of a train loaded with munitions in the harbour destroyed the waterfront district, killing 52 people: the church lost its organ, main door and windows, but the chapel of the Madonna was left intact, and rebuilding was completed in the summer of 1947. Since 1954 the church has also been a Marian sanctuary. Mass times should be checked with the parish.
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22 October is the town's votive feast: it recalls the eruption of Vesuvius in 1822, when, according to tradition, during a penitential procession a ray of sunlight broke through the ash cloud onto the face of the statue, while the lava heading towards Boscotrecase came to a halt.
Scavi archeologici di Oplonti

The Oplontis excavations, in the centre of Torre Annunziata, uncover part of Oplontis, a suburban settlement of Pompeii buried by the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79 together with Pompeii, Herculaneum and Stabiae. The site includes a large leisure villa known as the Villa of Poppaea and a farm villa called Villa B, or the Villa of Lucius Crassius Tertius. The first digs, in the eighteenth century, were by Francesco La Vega, who reached the villa through a tunnel near the Conte di Sarno canal, but they were soon abandoned because of the unhealthy air; they resumed in 1839, and systematic excavation began in the nineteen-sixties. Since 1997 the site has been a UNESCO World Heritage site together with Pompeii and Herculaneum.
What to see
The Villa of Poppaea dates from the first century BC and was enlarged under Claudius. It is attributed to Poppaea Sabina, Nero's wife, because of a painted inscription on an amphora addressed to one of her freedmen, but the attribution is debated. At the time of the eruption it was empty, perhaps under repair after the earthquake of 62. Many frescoes are in the Second Style, with architecture painted in trompe-l'œil: in the atrium, in the triclinium with a basket of figs, in a hall with peacocks, theatre masks and a sanctuary of Apollo, and in a larger hall with a basket of fruit under a transparent veil and a glass bowl of pomegranates. In the caldarium of the baths is the myth of Hercules in the Garden of the Hesperides, in the Third Style.
To the east lies a swimming pool 61 metres long and 17 wide, once lined with marble statues, Roman copies of Greek originals; in the north garden, casts of the roots have made it possible to identify large olive trees. Villa B, from the second century BC, was by contrast inhabited at the time of the eruption: in its vaulted rooms the bodies of 54 people were found with gold and silver jewellery and coins, the so-called Gold of Oplontis, and the villa held about 400 amphorae.
Visiting
The Villa of Poppaea lies about ten metres below the level of the modern town, and its western part is still covered by a road and modern buildings. Villa B cannot be visited. Many finds from Oplontis are in the National Archaeological Museum of Naples. Opening times and tickets should be checked on the website of the Pompeii Archaeological Park.
Our editors' tip
In the western part of the villa, in a bedroom, archaeologists obtained casts of the wooden door and window, and in the small peristyle the original beam above the lararium niche survives, carbonised.