Carminiello ai Mannesi, Former baroque church in central Naples, Italy

Carminiello ai Mannesi is the excavated ruin of a Roman building erected at the end of the 1st century AD, later covered by a church destroyed in 1943. Its surviving walls of pale grey stone and brick include a tall jagged section with narrow blind arches, lower broken enclosure walls, and a short flight of steps. The lower floor held service rooms around a frescoed hall and a small bath suite; the upper floor had a large basin and a marble fountain.

The church was built over Roman structures from the imperial period that shaped the site for centuries. Bombardment in 1943 destroyed the church building and exposed the ancient Roman layers beneath.

The Mithraeum occupies two rooms of the lower floor; on the back wall survive traces of a stucco relief showing the god Mithras killing the bull. The sources do not date its installation precisely, placing it among the imperial-era renovations of the building. The name Mannesi refers to the area where cart builders and repairers worked.

The site sits behind a fence near the historic center, about one block south of Naples Cathedral. Visitors should check ahead as access times may be limited due to the archaeological nature of the location.

In two lower-floor rooms, a stucco relief on the back wall shows Mithras killing the bull; this is the only visible trace of the Mithraeum installed during the imperial period. The marble basin with a stepped central fountain on the upper floor later held the burials of children aged about four months to four years, covered with soil containing 13th-century glazed pottery.