What to see · San Severo

More places of interest

• Chiesa di San Giovanni Battista

  The church of San Giovanni Battista, an archpriest's church and collegiate church, is the fourth parish of San Severo. It was raised to a collegiate church on 16 July 1849.

  What to see

  Built in the twelfth century and endowed with great riches by Joan of Anjou, the church had its entrance opposite the present one, opened after the rebuilding that followed the earthquake of 1731. The exterior has a sober nineteenth-century facade and a fine eighteenth-century bell tower, left unfinished.

  The spacious Baroque interior holds many canvases by Nicola Menzele, who also painted the large Baptism of Jesus that adorns the ceiling, of 1779, fine wooden statues, among them the nineteenth-century Saint John the Baptist by Giuseppe d'Onofrio, and a refined Romanesque stone baptismal font.

  Visiting

  The church is in San Severo. The sources consulted give no opening hours or visiting arrangements: check them.

  Our editors' tip

  On the exterior survive stone material of the Roman age, from Lucera and ancient Teano, some inscriptions and two Romanesque stylophore lions.

• Chiesa di San Lorenzo delle Benedettine

  The church of San Lorenzo delle Benedettine, also called San Benedetto, is a national monument and one of the most important religious buildings of San Severo. It is a rectory and grange of San Severino and is attached to the monumental monastery of the Benedictine nuns.

  What to see

  It was built to a design by the Neapolitan architect Giuseppe Astarita, considerably altered by Ambrosio Piazza in 1782. It has a superb Rococo facade in Apricena marble, executed by 1789 by the sculptor Pietro Palmieri to a design by Piazza, and an elegant bell tower with a small majolica dome. The church is the greatest Apulian example of a Baroque church on a central plan.

  Inside stand out the elegant stucco decoration made by Piazza and the three superb altars designed by the architect Gennaro Sanmartino and made by Vincenzo d'Adamo in 1793, enriched by the last documented sculptures of Giuseppe Sanmartino; the high altar is one of the masterpieces of its kind. Also to be admired are the paintings by Nicola Menzele, of about 1785, the refined wooden pulpit of 1790, the rich gilded wooden lattices of the women's galleries and the nineteenth-century statues of Saint Lawrence, Saint Benedict and Saint Scholastica, works by Arcangelo Testa, and of Saint Anne.

  Visiting

  The church is in San Severo, next to the Benedictine nuns' monastery. The sources consulted give no opening hours or visiting arrangements: check them.

  Our editors' tip

  On the central women's gallery, in line with the high altar, is a rich positive organ attributed to Fabrizio Cimino, of about 1740, which recalls the extraordinary singing vocation of the «Signore Monache» and the monastery's famous musical chapel, with an important manuscript collection of compositions by, among others, Pergolesi, Insanguine, Jommelli, Capotorti and Piccinni.

• Chiesa Matrice di San Severino Abate

  The church of San Severino abate, a national monument, is the oldest religious building in San Severo, first attested in 1059. It is the historical and religious heart of the town, of which it is the first parish, mother church, archpriest's church and civic temple.

  What to see

  Between the Lombard and Byzantine ages Benedictine monasticism spread from Montecassino, and with it the cult of Saint Severinus, apostle of Noricum: on the probable route of the variant of the Via Francigena now called the Via Sacra Langobardorum a small church dedicated to the saint arose, near which in the eleventh century, thanks to the flow of pilgrims bound for Monte Sant'Angelo, the present town formed, originally called Castellum Sancti Severini. The original three-nave Benedictine church was transformed into a single-nave temple by 1224, the year in which it was reconsecrated by Risandro, bishop of Melfi. Immediately after 1295, under Charles II of Anjou, it was enlarged with salvaged building materials probably from Frederick II's abandoned palatium Bellumvidere: the nave was lengthened and the transept added, giving the present Latin-cross plan, made evocative by the characteristic slanting apse, which simulates the bowed head of Christ. The earthquake of 30 July 1627 heavily damaged the church; rebuilt, it was decorated by the mid-eighteenth century in a festive, colourful Baroque, with painted marbles and architecture, frescoes and painted ceilings. In 1780 the interior was almost entirely whitewashed, very probably for disinfection during the influenza pandemic called the «Russian plague». Unsafe and closed in January 1960, after forty-eight years of neglect and much-discussed restorations it was reopened for worship on 27 April 2008; between 2021 and 2023 a new complete restoration recovered the opulent eighteenth-century decoration of the walls.

  The main facade, in stone and brick, has a portal with the inscription recalling the reconsecration of 1224 and, in a niche in the pediment, a late medieval statuette of Saint Severinus in apostle's dress. The transept facade, richer, has a portal of the Frederician age attributed to Bartolomeo da Foggia, with a sumptuous archivolt carried by lion-shaped corbels, a six-spoked rose window and a bas-relief triptych with the saint in pontifical dress between two angels, of the twelfth century. Next to it stands the bell tower, the tallest in the town, fifty metres high: the lower part, in dressed stone with a Gothic mullioned window, is medieval and carries two nineteenth-century sundials; the upper part, Baroque and in brick, was built around 1730 and ends in a pyramidal spire covered in majolica tiles. The interior, thirty-six metres deep, has a single nave; near the entrance the large baptistery has a stone font of the thirteenth century, its base an inverted Romanesque capital, surmounted by an eighteenth-century wooden ciborium. Among the works is an altarpiece of the Madonna of Constantinople with Saint Mark the Evangelist and Saint Anthony Abbot, of the Venetian school, of 1540; in the transept can be seen, on the right, a large Gothic stone arch and, on the left, the sumptuous organ by Innocenzo Gallo, of the eighteenth century, under which is an early nineteenth-century nativity scene by the Neapolitan sculptor Arcangelo Testa.

  Visiting

  The church is in San Severo. The sources consulted give no opening hours or visiting arrangements: check them.

  Our editors' tip

  The body of the titular saint, kept in the basilica of San Sossio at Frattamaggiore, has come to this church in peregrinatio twice, in October 2008 and in October 2011; the church nevertheless keeps two notable relics of the saint.

• Santuario Beata Vergine del Soccorso

  The shrine of the Blessed Virgin of Succour in San Severo, otherwise known as the church of Sant'Agostino, is the largest shrine of the diocese of San Severo. Raised to a shrine in 1957, the church is a grange of San Nicola and the seat of the Archconfraternity of Succour.

  What to see

  Originally dedicated to Saint Peter, the church was built in the twelfth century and became the seat of the Augustinian fathers, who added a monastery already attested in the fourteenth century. Having returned to the town after a period away, the monks promoted the cult of the Black Madonna, who in 1857 was elected equally principal patron of the town and the diocese, alongside Saint Severinus and Saint Severus: according to tradition the statue of the Madonna of Succour, made Baroque in 1760 by the artist Nicola Antonio Brudaglio of Andria, arrived from Sicily. When the Augustinian monastery was finally suppressed, in 1652, devotion was kept alive by the massari di campo, the landowners, who after 1679 formed a confraternity.

  Completely renovated between 1750 and 1759, in 1780 the church received its elegant stone facade, the work of Pietro and Gregorio Palmieri. The high altar, by the Neapolitan marble worker Vincenzo Palmieri, was made by 1768; slightly later are the two elegant side altars in polychrome marble, of Saint Michael and Saint Raphael, the latter with a wooden statue of 1750 by Domenico Urbano. The slender Baroque bell tower is the result of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century layers. In 1912, under the direction of Severino del Giudice, the interior was radically modernised: the single spacious nave was decorated with dense Neo-Renaissance friezes in stucco and papier-mâché, the coffered ceiling too is papier-mâché, and a new marble ancona in Umbertine taste was raised to keep the statue of the Madonna; of the earlier stuccoes only those of the sober neoclassical dome survive.

  Visiting

  The shrine is in San Severo. The sources consulted give no opening hours or visiting arrangements: check them.

  Our editors' tip

  Among the works worth looking for: the pipe organ by Pasquale d'Onofrio, of 1815, the eighteenth-century wooden choir, the nativity scene and the painted wooden statue of Saint Michael, both by Giuseppe Catello, and the large gilded wooden torch-bearing angels, of the nineteenth century, beside the high altar.

• Teatro Comunale Giuseppe Verdi

  The Giuseppe Verdi Municipal Theatre in San Severo is the greatest theatre hall of Capitanata and the third Italian-style theatre in Apulia, after the Petruzzelli in Bari and the Politeama Greco in Lecce.

  What to see

  Heir to the Teatro Real Borbone, a structure of over four hundred seats opened in 1819 and closed in 1927, itself heir to the town's first public theatre, the eighteenth-century one of the Decurionato, it was built to a design by Cesare Bazzani, with work begun in 1929 and finished in 1936. It rose in a very central area, on the large garden of the Benedictine nuns' monastery, on a nearly trapezoidal plan; the elegant and imposing fronts, of clearly neoclassical style, made a forceful presence on corso Garibaldi, with the facade, and on the «Giro Esterno», with the left flank. It was inaugurated on 9 December 1937 with Umberto Giordano's Andrea Chénier, with Rosetta Pampanini in the lead: the composer, invited, could not come for reasons of health and apologised by letter, saying he was proud, as an Apulian, that his San Severo could boast one of the most beautiful and modern theatres in Italy. Dedicated to Giuseppe Verdi in 1975, it was closed in 1987 for restoration and reopened in 1991; the external fronts were restored in 2002.

  The interior is very refined: the vast foyer, in warm golden tones, is matched by the larger and more austere boxes' lounge, today an auditorium, surrounded by spacious small salons. The Italian-style hall, with excellent acoustics, has five tiers, with a vast upper gallery and a large amphitheatre, and shows a considered eclecticism that seems to retrace the history of European theatre buildings from classical antiquity to the present. From the grand dome, which recalls that of the Pantheon in Rome, hangs a gigantic Murano crystal chandelier weighing about ten quintals (Venini firm, 1935). The stucco decorations and the paintings on canvas were made, on Bazzani's instructions, by the San Severo artist Luigi Schingo. Born with sixteen hundred seats, the theatre has a stage fifteen metres deep and twenty wide, with fifty dressing rooms spread over six floors.

  Visiting

  The theatre is in San Severo, in the centre, with its facade on corso Garibaldi. The sources consulted give no information on the box office or the programme: check them.

  Our editors' tip

  Among the events that have marked the theatre's history stands out the world premiere of «Ferdinando», masterpiece of the playwright Annibale Ruccello, staged on 28 February 1986, directed by the author himself and with Isa Danieli in the cast.

• Museo Diocesiano

  The Diocesan Museum of San Severo is an important repository of sacred art, set up in the hypogean rooms of the seventeenth-century Palazzo del Seminario, in the basement of the building.

  What to see

  The museum keeps sacred silver, jewellery of secular goldsmithing, which are ex-votos, wooden and stone statuary, rich priestly vestments and paintings of different periods.

  Among the most significant pieces stand out a reliquary in stone and onyx of 1045, a collection of medieval collection plates in embossed copper, some notable polychrome wooden statues of the medieval and Renaissance periods and precious Baroque silver monstrances. A small lapidary keeps inscriptions of the fifth to third century BC from Teanum Apulum and from Sant'Agata di Tremiti.

  Visiting

  The museum is in the Palazzo del Seminario, in San Severo. The sources consulted give no opening hours or visiting arrangements: check them. Exhibitions of various kinds, archaeological, painting or photographic, are set up in the museum from time to time.

  Our editors' tip

  The museum has an official site on the portal of the diocese of San Severo, diocesisansevero.it, and a page on ameipuglia.it.

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