The church of San Francesco da Paola was built in Fasano in the seventeenth century, outside the town walls, together with the hospice of the Minim friars. Work finished in 1683, and in 1740 Father Paolo Guarini had the building enlarged; in 1870 the church was fully restored. The hospice, which had become a monastery in 1716, was suppressed in 1806 and turned into a hospital in 1813: today the whole convent complex is part of the Umberto I civic hospital.
What to see
At the top of the façade is a stone statue of Saint Francis of Paola. The interior has a single nave with transept and side chapels. The high altar, dedicated to Our Lady of La Salette, is the work of a local craftsman, from 1882: it was a Minim chaplain who brought this devotion, born in France, to Fasano at the end of the nineteenth century. Above the entrance are a wooden canopy and a pipe organ of 1876, and in the middle of the church the eighteenth-century wooden pulpit. The dome paintings date from 1928: eight segments with the Beatitudes and four pendentives with the evangelists.
The chapel altars, in stone and stucco, are of the seventeenth-century Neapolitan or Apulian school. On the right are the statue of the Pietà, carried in procession on Good Friday, and paintings of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, the Crucifixion and Saint Francis crossing the Strait of Messina; on the left the Assumption, the Madonna del Pozzo, Saint Lucy and Saint Michael.
Visiting
From 1972 to 1986 the church was the temporary seat of the parish of Santa Maria della Salette. Mass times and opening hours should be checked on the spot.
Our editors' tip
According to legend the church arose from the vow of a soldier from Fasano, Leonardo Carrieri, enlisted in the Spanish army: having escaped death, he became a friar among the Minims of Monopoli under the name fra' Fortunato and began building it at the gates of Fasano.
