The church of Santa Maria Vetere is a Franciscan church in Andria, with its adjoining convent, one of the most important of the province of the Observant Friars Minor of San Nicola.
What to see
The façade is sober, with a large portal topped by a cornice and a broad window; on the gables stand the statues of Saint Anthony and Saint Paschal Baylon, and in the centre, in a niche, Saint Francis kneeling. The interior is a single nave; the six symmetrical altars were removed in the 1970s, but the canvases that adorned them remain in place. In the church is kept an organ built in 1756, restored in the 1990s; the dome, restored in 2010, has frescoes of the Eternal Father, Jesus Christ, the Virgin, Saint Francis and the Franciscan doctors Alexander of Hales, Saint Bonaventure, Roger Bacon and John Duns Scotus. The bell tower, about forty metres high and built into the church beside the presbytery, dates from the 16th century, as an inscription of 1570 attests, and holds four bells, among them one of 1496 with the characteristic form of the time. The oldest part of the convent is the cloister, with seven pointed arches on each side and cross vaults, with lunettes frescoed with episodes from the life of Saint Francis and medallions with saints of the order; in the centre, among four stone columns, is a cistern.
By the bull «Admovet nos suscepti cura», dated Florence 11 September 1435, Pope Eugenius IV authorised the provincial vicar Father Antonio da Andria to found three convents, one of which was Santa Maria Vetere; the goodwill of the people and the coming to Andria, in 1436, of Saint John of Capistrano helped the task. The convent was the seat of the provincial minister and a Studio generale, with a school of theology and a hospital for the sick. After the suppression of the religious orders in the Kingdom of Naples the convent, in 1866, was turned into a home for the elderly, entrusted to the Little Sisters of the Poor and then to the Bocconiste Sisters, who still run a rest home there today. In 1908 a new building was constructed beside the church, which since 1960 has housed a private nursery school.
Visiting
The church is in Andria; opening hours and service times, and the possibility of seeing the cloister, should be checked, because the sources consulted do not give them and the convent houses a rest home.
Our editors' tip
If you can, look for the bell of 1496 in the bell tower, with its ancient form and silvery tone: it is the oldest of the four.
