What to see · Santa Croce di Magliano

More places of interest

• Chiesa San Giacomo Apostolo

  In this church the finest piece is not the church: it is the bell tower. The front is plain, with a triangular pediment and an unpretentious lintelled doorway; the tower, on the other hand, is carefully worked, and the bell chamber is decorated with pilasters of a curving profile. Whoever spent, spent on height.

  What to see

  The church was built in 1727 at the entrance to the town's main street. The bell tower came much later, in the second half of the nineteenth century, and was closed at the top by an onion spire of Neapolitan taste: a shape often met in Molise and Puglia and recognisable from far off.

  The earthquake of 2002 brought down that very spire and forced the church to close; it stayed unusable for years before the restoration works began, and they have since been completed. The feast of saint James the apostle is celebrated on the twenty-fifth of July.

  Visiting

  The church is at the entrance to corso Umberto, in the centre of Santa Croce di Magliano, the easternmost municipality of Molise; it opens for services. Twenty minutes.

  Our editors' tip

  Look at the spire knowing it was put back. After the earthquake the tower could have been closed with a flat roof, simpler and cheaper, and nobody would have complained. Instead the most fragile and most recognisable part was rebuilt: that onion is the profile the town has seen from the square for a hundred and fifty years, and they decided to have it back.

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