Chiesa di Ognissanti, Romanesque church in Trani, Italy

Chiesa di Ognissanti is a 12th-century Romanesque church on the harbour shore of Trani, also called dei Templari or del Purgatorio. Its facade, on an internal street, is covered by an outer portico with houses built above it. Three rectangular doorways have sculpted lunettes: the Annunciation on the central one, two peacocks pecking at a vine on the left. At the rear, facing the sea, three small semicircular apses project outward.

The church was probably founded in the 12th century, as several documents attest, while the apses and sculptural decoration are attributed to the following century. It stood on the harbour, likely with its own landing stage, outside the city walls, which only came to enclose the port under Frederick II. A Ravello merchant colony probably influenced it: in 1170 the notary Orso Rogadeo left a vineyard to the church, and Ravello families later held its patronage.

Locals call it the church of the Purgatory, a name it took in the early 19th century when devotion to the souls in Purgatory moved here. From then it housed confraternities, first the Archconfraternity of the Beata Vergine dei Sette Dolori, later the Confraternity of the Annunziata. On the architrave of the sacristy door, carved in low relief, are the coats of arms of the Ravello families Rogadeo and Achonzaico together with that of the Lambertini.

The facade faces an internal street, covered by an outer portico with later houses built above it; the three rectangular doorways open onto the nave and two aisles. The most recognisable side is the rear, turned toward the sea, with three small projecting semicircular apses. The narrow lane called Angiporto, which once led straight to the water, was closed for good in the 19th century.

The epitaph of Abbot Constantine, a physician, is carved on a slab near the right entrance door, probably from the 12th century. It is the only historical document linking the church to its medieval past, and long fed the belief that he was a Templar abbot, though no proof of that membership exists.