In beautiful Naples, one can visit a jewel of beauty, where holiness shines brightly: the church of San Domenico Soriano and Nunzio Sulprizio.
It is one of Naples’ monumental churches, located in Piazza Dante. It takes its name from the miraculous image of Saint Dominic of Soriano of the same name and from the fact that it houses the tomb of Saint Nunzio Sulprizio (canonized in 2018).
The history
The church and the adjoining convent were built thanks to a donation made to the Dominican Tommaso Vesti by Sara Ruffo di Mesurica. With those funds, the Calabrian Dominican friars purchased the small church of Santa Maria della Salute, built in 1587.
Construction of the monastery began between 1673 and 1685. During the 18th century, it was further expanded, but the monastery did not have a long life and underwent numerous alterations, both external and internal, often changing its intended use. The entire complex was eventually used as a barracks until 1850. The church can now be visited and is open to the public, while the monastery and the cloister premises house some offices of the Municipality of Naples.
The church
In the 17th century, the interior, consisting of three naves and side chapels, received a rich and refined Baroque decoration designed by Cosimo Fanzago, who also executed the high altar, where the body of Saint Nunzio Sulprizio is now placed. However, the church underwent various additional works in the following centuries. Although the main façade on Piazza Dante remains almost the original one, with Vesuvian lava stone and sculptures of Saints Thomas Aquinas (on the right) and Dominic of Guzmán (on the left), the interiors, in contrast, feature other eighteenth- and nineteenth-century stucco and marble decorations following the mainly Fanzago-designed Baroque works; all the fresco cycles on the vault and in the chapels date from the same period.
In the third chapel on the left is Giacinto Diano’s painting of the Virgin presenting the miraculous image of Saint Dominic of Soriano.
On the left side of the transept hangs a painting by Luca Giordano depicting Our Lady of the Rosary (1690); on the right, another Madonna of the Rosary is attributed to Onofrio Palumbo, while the canvases depicting the Annunciation to Mary, the Visitation of the Angel, the Nativity, the Fall beneath the Cross, the Crowning with Thorns, the Flagellation, and the Presentation in the Temple, dated 1703, are by Giacomo Farelli. The vault was frescoed by Salvatore Cozzolino and Vincenzo Galloppi with scenes from the lives of Franciscan and Dominican saints (1882); these works replaced earlier cycles by Mattia Preti from 1664 depicting the Glory of Saint Dominic of Guzmán, which were subsequently lost.
Other seventeenth-century paintings and sculptures in the church have unknown attributions, though they are from the Neapolitan school; some nineteenth-century frescoes, on the other hand, are attributed to Bernardino Castelli, while others of certain authorship are by Luigi Fabron and Luigi Scorrano.
Who is Saint Nunzio Sulprizio
For Neapolitans, he is “O Santariell’ nuost’,” our little saint.
Saint Nunzio Sulprizio was a young man who lived between 1817 and 1836. He lived only nineteen years, and they were extremely difficult years: orphaned and almost always ill, he experienced rejection and exploitation, finding love and acceptance only at the end of his life, but he faced everything with a great love for Jesus.
He is a saint capable of speaking to our time because he made his suffering an instrument of love for God and others.
To learn about the Sanctuary
Contacts and addresses
Piazza Dante, 82
80135 Naples
Tel. 081 54 99 398
How to get there the Sanctuary
