Salerno Cathedral (or duomo) is the main church in the city of Salerno in southern Italy and a major tourist attraction. It is dedicated to Saint Matthew, whose relics are inside the crypt.
The Cathedral was built when the city was the capital of the Principality of Salerno, over a more ancient church ("Church of S. Maria degli Angeli and S. Giovanni Battista") probably from the last roman centuries.
In 1688, the architect Ferdinando Sanfelice remodelled the interior of the Duomo in the Neapolitan Baroque and Rococo styles. A restoration in the 1930s brought it back to an appearance similar to the original one.
The Duomo is a symbol of the Italian Renaissance because inside is the tomb of Pope Gregory VII who rejected imperial domination of the church.
..special note of the magnificent main entrance, the 12th-century Porta dei Leoni, named after the marble lions at the foot of the stairway. It leads through to a beautiful, harmonious courtyard, surrounded by graceful arches and overlooked by a 12th-century bell tower. Carry on through the huge bronze doors (similarly guarded by lions), which were cast in Constantinople in the 11th century. When you come to the three-aisled interior, you will see that it is largely baroque, with only a few traces of the original church. These include parts of the transept and choir floor and the two raised pulpits in front of the choir stalls. Throughout the church you can see highly detailed 13th-century mosaic work redolent of the extraordinary early-Christian mosaics in Ravenna...In the right-hand apse, there it is the Cappella delle Crociate (Chapel of the Crusades), containing powerful frescoes and more wonderful mosaics. It was so named because crusaders’ weapons were blessed here. Under the altar stands the tomb of 11th-century pope Gregory VII...[1]
Architectural features
One of the pulpitsThe CryptMadonna with Child
The most striking external feature is the bell tower (mid-12th century), with small arcades and mullioned windows, standing 56 m high and in Arabic-Norman style. It contains 8 large bells. The façade has a Romanesque portal with Byzantine-style bronze doors from Constantinople (1099), with 56 panels with figures, crosses and stories from Jesus's life. The entrance has a portico with 28 antique columns whose pointed arches, with lava rock intarsia, show influence of Arab art, and contains a series of ancient Roman sarcophagi.
The interior has a nave and two aisles, divided by pilasters in which the original columns are embedded, and three apses. Artworks include two pulpits with mosaic decorations, paintings by Francesco Solimena, a 14th-century Gothic fresco of Madonna with Child and the sepulchres of the Neapolitan queen Margaret of Durazzo, of Roger Borsa and of archbishop Bartolomeo d'Arpano, and the tomb of Pope Gregory VII.
The Cathedral is visited by thousands of tourists from all over the world and has two important additional sections: the Duomo Museum and the Cripta with Saint Matthews remains.
The "Duomo Museum" houses artworks from different ages, including the silver statues of the Salernitane Martyrs (13th century) and documents of the renowned Schola Medica Salernitana (the first University of Europe, according to some scholars like G. Crisci).
The Cript
the Cript ceiling
The most famous and important section of the Cathedral is the Cript, that contains the rests of one of the twelve apostles: Saint Matthew.
This Crypt, with the remains of Matthew the Apostle brought there in 954 AD, is a groin vaulted hall with a basilica-like plan divided by columns.
It was restored under design by Domenico Fontana and his son Giulio in 1606–1608, with marble decorations added in the 18th century.
All of the ceiling frescoes are painted by Belisario Corenzio and depict scenes from the Gospel of Matthew, as well as some episodes of the history of Salerno (such as the siege of the city by the French).
Inside the Cript there are the tombs of saint Caio, Ante e Fortunato & San Felice with the remains of virgin saints Marina and Costanza. [2]
Inside a hole of the Cript's main altar can be seen the original remains of Saint Matthew, that produced until the XIX century a special liquid called "Manna San Matteo" (similar to the Saint Gennaro's blood liquefaction).
A mosaic is a pattern or image made of small regular or irregular pieces of colored stone, glass or ceramic, held in place by plaster/mortar, and covering a surface. Mosaics are often used as floor and wall decoration, and were particularly popular in the Ancient Roman world.
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