What to see · Francavilla Fontana

More places of interest

• Chiesa Matrice di Francavilla Fontana

  The collegiate basilica of the Santissimo Rosario, the mother church of Francavilla Fontana, is the largest in the diocese of Oria. Tradition ties its origin to 14 September 1310, when the prince of Taranto, Philip I of Anjou, found a Byzantine icon of the Madonna by a spring and ordered a church to be built around it. That building, enlarged around 1510 and consecrated in 1572, was badly damaged by the earthquake of 1743, and rather than repair it they chose to rebuild it. The whole town shared in the cost: Prince Michele Imperiali offered more than half the sum, the officials of the Università gave up their salaries, the people gave alms. The first stone was laid on 15 August 1743; the design, which came from Rome, was chosen with the help of the architect Mauro Manieri, who directed the works for a year. In 1759 the church was inaugurated, though not entirely finished. Since 2012 it has been a minor basilica.

  What to see

  The façade in some respects recalls the Roman churches of the Gesù and Sant'Ignazio, and is closer to the Baroque of Rome than to the Lecce Baroque of the nearby towns: paired pilasters with Corinthian capitals give it an undulating movement. There are three doors; in the lunette of the central doorway are the image of the Madonna della Fontana and the civic coat of arms, and at the far sides of the façade, beside the volutes, the statues of the apostles Peter and Paul. The dome, described as the highest in Salento, thirteen metres in diameter, is covered outside with polychrome majolica tiles, in the Neapolitan manner, and rests on a tall drum with eight large windows. The bell tower was begun in 1791 to Manieri's design and was completed only in recent years.

  The interior has a central plan in the form of a Greek cross, extended in the apse, with a nave and two aisles: a rare model in the Salento churches of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, almost all of them Latin crosses. Four massive piers carry the arches and pendentives of the dome. In the chapel of the Madonna della Fontana the old icon of the Virgin and Child is set into the wall, behind the altar commissioned in 1773 from the Neapolitan marble-worker Domenico Tucci. The high altar and the marble balustrade come from the old church of San Francesco d'Assisi. Many canvases are by Domenico Carella, among them the Giving of the Keys and the Battle of Lepanto.

  Visiting

  The basilica was reopened for worship on 16 May 2021, after the works inside the dome and on the transept. The Madonna della Fontana is celebrated on 24 January and 14 September; opening and Mass times should be checked with the parish.

  Our editors' tip

  As you enter, turn towards the inner façade: above the main door is The Fall of the Lightning, a canvas by Ludovico Delli Guanti. It recalls 28 March 1779, when an administrative assembly being held in the church ended in heavy insults, and a bolt of lightning killed Angelo Candita, one of those who had used the most offensive language. The event was held to be miraculous.

Some links may earn BigItalia a commission, at no extra cost to you.