European Heritage Days 2025 | September 27-28

Museo Cappella Sansevero is participating in the European Heritage Days 2025, scheduled for September 27 and 28, with a special initiative titled Architectures of Thought: Dialogues of Stone and Light.

As has been the case in recent editions of the European Heritage Days, the Museum is once again engaged in a cultural solidarity project: part of the proceeds from Saturday, September 27—specifically, €1 for each paying visitor—will be donated to the non-profit association Friends of Naples to support the restoration of the side chapels of the Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli in Pizzofalcone.

In line with this year’s theme, Architectures: The Art of Building, the Museum pays tribute to the work conceived by Raimondo di Sangro, where design, technical experimentation, and art coexist.
On Saturday, September 27, thematic guided tours will be held and the Museum will extend its opening hours until 8:30 PM (last entry 30 minutes before closing).
The thematic itinerary invites visitors to explore the architectural dimension of the Chapel, which often goes unnoticed due to the awe inspired by its celebrated masterpieces. The experience shifts the focus from individual sculptures to an interpretation of the entire building as a complex architectural work.
A place where every element—from marble to light, from sculpture to flooring—testifies to an "architecture of knowledge."

The tour highlights lesser-known features: the sober, classical façade with its inscription commemorating the transformation of the site into a family chapel (dated 1613); the small door, subject to documented modifications since October 21, 1744; the single-nave floor plan with eight arches and the large arch leading into the presbytery; the barrel-vault ceiling frescoed by Francesco Maria Russo with the sumptuous Glory of Paradise (1749), inspired by Roman frescoes; and the main altar, the symbolic culmination of the itinerary, crowned by the Lamentation sculpted by Francesco Celebrano in the 1760s.
Within the nave, every artwork occupies a precise position and forms a step in an ideal path toward the difficult pursuit of knowledge.
Particular emphasis is placed on the labyrinth floor designed by Francesco Celebrano and conceived by Raimondo di Sangro: a network of marble inlays in which a continuous, uninterrupted white marble line serves as a symbolic guiding thread. Today, only a few fragments remain, visible in front of the Prince’s tomb, in the underground chamber, and in the sacristy—testimonies to an initiatory project left partly unfinished.

This edition of the European Heritage Days is thus also an invitation to rediscover the Sansevero Chapel as a living space, capable of speaking to the present through the silent power of its forms.

A brochure in Italian and in English will be distributed to accompany the visit, also useful for those who wish to follow the thematic route independently. The same text is published below to make it accessible to the visually impaired, ensuring inclusive access:

On the occasion of the European Heritage Days 2025, whose theme this year is Architectural Heritage: Windows to the Past, Doors to the Future, we invite you to explore the Sansevero Chapel Museum and to notice details easily lost amid the overwhelming Baroque splendour of the Sansevero Chapel.

Architecture is about more than just building: it is the visible expression of cultural, spiritual, and social visions that have shaped our landscapes and cities over the centuries.

The Chapel designed by Raimondo di Sangro is not just a place of burial but an architectural work in which design, technical experimentation, art, and philosophy coexist. A space in which every element – from marble to light, from sculpture to flooring – bears witness to an ‘architecture of knowledge’, in constant dialogue between the visible and invisible, the past and the future.

In his Guida Sacra della Città di Napoli (Sacred Guide to the City of Naples), Canon Gennaro Aspreno Galante, founder of the Accademia di Archeologia Sacra (Academy of Sacred Archaeology), presents a series of itineraries to the city’s main places of worship, including La Pietatella or Sansevero Chapel.

The Chapel is, of course, best known for Giuseppe Sanmartino’s sculpture of the Veiled Christ, yet Galante begins his account with a description of its architecture. Our exploration too starts from the design of the complex – vessel and repository of more celebrated treasures.

The main façade, which faces the narrow Via Francesco de Sanctis, is characterised by a simple and restrained design that perfectly reflects the classical taste still in vogue at the time of its foundation in the late sixteenth century.

The portal bears a Latin inscription which reads: “Alessandro di Sangro, Patriarch of Alexandria, dedicated this temple, built from the foundations to the Blessed Virgin, as a sepulchre for himself and his family in the year of our Lord MDCXIII [1613]”. It recalls the chapel’s transformation into a private funerary chapel for the Princes of Sansevero in the early seventeenth century.

The earliest record of Raimondo di Sangro’s direct involvement in work on the Chapel concerns the so-called ‘small door’, which opens onto what is now Via Raimondo di Sangro. Dated 21 October 1744, it documents a payment made by the Prince to the stonemason Matteo Saggese for a “new arrangement of piperno stonework carried out on the small door of his abbey church of Santa Maria della Pietà”.

A meaningful Latin inscription, dictated by the Prince himself, is still visible on the side portal:

“O passerby, whoever you may be — citizen, immigrant, or foreigner — enter and reverently adore the image of the Pietà Regina, long held as prodigious. A sepulchral temple, formerly sacred to the Virgin, was ably enlarged in 1767 by Raimondo di Sangro, Prince of Sansevero, moved by the renown of his forebears, to preserve his ashes and those of his family in the tombs therein for all eternity. Observe carefully with attentive eyes and, alas, contemplate with sorrow the bones of heroes burdened with the merits. When you have duly paid homage to the Mother of God, offer a contribution to the work and to the deceased as is fitting, and then take your leave.”

The Chapel, a refined example of Neapolitan Baroque, has a longitudinal plan with a single nave. Along the side walls, eight round arches — four on each side — lead to as many chapels, while a large arch separates the nave from the sanctuary, which supports the High Altar.

Above the arches runs a continuous cornice along the entire length of the nave, executed in an innovative mastic developed by Raimondo di Sangro himself. From this line rises the barrel vault, entirely frescoed by Francesco Maria Russo with the magnificent composition of the Glory of Paradise, one of the first works commissioned for the complex by the Prince of Sansevero.

The fresco constitutes a powerful aesthetic and spiritual statement. It is no coincidence that, during his years of training in Rome at the Collegio Romano, di Sangro admired one of the greatest examples of Baroque illusionist painting: Andrea Pozzo’s frescoes in the Church of Saint Ignatius of Loyola. Its spectacular perspective quadratures, false architectures, and celestial visions stretching towards infinity – including the famous mock dome – profoundly inspired the illusionistic layout that Russo devised in Naples.

In the Chapel vault, the Holy Spirit radiates divine light from the centre of an imaginary architectural setting, surrounded by angels and ascending saints, while a mock dome and medallions with saints from the di Sangro family complete the scene. If Pozzo elevates Saint Ignatius towards Glory with a beam of light crossing the universe, Russo interprets that same ascending contrast/conflict in a more intimate and familiar manner, framing it within the celebration of the Sangro family.

The nave presents itself as a cohesive architectural whole, each element designed to guide the eye towards the altar. The longitudinal space is defined by strict symmetry, broken only by two central passages: on one side, the lateral door; on the other, access to the sacristy and the underground cavea, a secret and evocative space. The visual axis running through the nave suggests a journey that is not merely physical but inward – a symbolic ascent from matter to transcendence, articulated through light, form, and correspondences.
The nave thus resembles a Gallery of Mirrors, where each monument sees its image reflected in its opposite counterpart.
In the side chapels beneath the arches are monuments dedicated to the princes of Sansevero, except for the final two chapels near the altar, which house two family saints, Saint Rosalia and Saint Oderisio.
Placed against the pillars are the ten Virtues, selected by Raimondo di Sangro as the stages of an ideal process leading to the arduous attainment of Knowledge, following the iconographic principles codified in 1593 by Cesare Ripa in his Iconologia.
The first two on either side of the entrance represent Divine Love and Decorum; further in, we see Education and Liberality facing each other, and, immediately afterwards, Self-control and Religious Zeal. Through the small passage leading to the Tomb of Prince Raimondo di Sangro, we admire Sincerity and The Sweetness of the Marital Yoke. Lastly, on either side of the altar, Disillusion and Modesty complete the path to Knowledge.
It is here that everything converges: the High Altar, the symbolic and spiritual pinnacle of the process. An altar that is not merely a destination, but an epiphany: where the aesthetics of Neapolitan Baroque reach their climax in the marble explosion of the high relief depicting Christ lying in the tomb.

From the High Altar unfolds one of the most complex and theatrical sights in the entire Chapel: the Deposition, or Lamentation, sculpted by Francesco Celebrano. The work combines dramatic intensity with symbolic depth. Christ is lowered from the cross into trembling arms in a motion at once calm and heartrending, while putti hold a shroud bearing the image of His face, evoking a sculpted relic.
This verticality, this ascending tension, inverted in the pathos of death, appears, once again, to recall another vision: the Annunciation sculpted on the altar of the church of St. Ignatius of Loyola in Rome, which, as a young man, Prince of Sangro had the chance to observe, cherishing its echo in his own creative practice. There too, a monumental and hierarchical layout directs the gaze from bottom to top.
It is within the cornice of the High Altar that one of Raimondo di Sangro’s most astonishing inventions takes shape: a blue that mimics lapis lazuli to perfection, but is only a resemblance of this precious stone. It is, in fact, skilfully worked wood, covered by a thin coloured paste of artificial composition, created in the Prince’s secret workshop inside Palazzo Sansevero, opposite the Chapel and overlooking Piazza San Domenico Maggiore. Through complex processes, Raimondo managed to produce an ultramarine blue with golden veins, at first sight indistinguishable from genuine lapis lazuli. Beneath, a very thin layer of gold and a red bole base intensify its brilliance, creating a refined optical play of reflections. This blue – the first documented example of artificial ultramarine – is not merely decorative: it is matter transformed into an idea, an imitation of nature that becomes an expression of ingenuity.

Along the nave once stretched a labyrinth floor, a dense weave of polychrome marble welcoming visitors’ footsteps as if through an initiatory process. The design, entrusted to Francesco Celebrano around the middle of the eighteenth century, envisaged an interweaving of geometric inlays in which a continuous, unbroken line of white marble was set, another prodigious invention of Raimondo di Sangro. A line that never breaks, that guides and disorients, that invites us to search for a deeper meaning. The Prince himself, in his will, remembers the undertaking as “arduous and fraught” – almost an omen of the work’s destiny, probably never fully completed before his death.
The floor, damaged following the collapse of a wing of Palazzo Sansevero in Piazza San Domenico Maggiore in 1889, survives today in fragments. Some slabs remain in the cavea, near the Tomb of Prince Raimondo, and in the sacristy. Swastika-like crosses alternate with concentric squares, forming a visual rhythm evoking the order of the elements and the movement of the stars. The marble shades, from blue to white, produced depth and a sense of vertigo, as if to transform the nave into a traversable threshold between the visible and invisible worlds.
An ancient idea is reflected in this geometry of matter: that of the initiatory labyrinth, a symbol of the path to knowledge, the inner quest, and transformation.
For nothing here is mere decoration: every form is a sign, every element leads elsewhere.

European Heritage Days 2025
September 27 and 28, 2025
Museo Cappella Sansevero
Architectures of Thought: Dialogues of Stone and Light
Naples, Via Francesco de Sanctis 19/21