Santuario dello Spirito Santo, Catholic pilgrimage church in Torre Annunziata, Italy.
The Sanctuary of the Holy Spirit, also called the Church of the Carmine, has a Latin-cross plan with a single nave 58.20 metres long and 12.70 metres wide, flanked by four chapels on each side between tall columns. Its facade has two orders separated by a decorated architrave, with three fluted pilasters and a broken pediment; the sagrato is paved in lava stone and edged by a white marble balustrade.
Cardinal Giuseppe Maria Capece Zurlo laid the first stone on 2 April 1787 to a design by the Neapolitan architect Vincenzo Lamberti, after the old chapel of the Arciconfraternita dei Santi Agostino e Monica and part of a 1603 chapel of the Madonna del Carmine were demolished. Work stalled during the Parthenopean Republic and the French occupation, resumed under Joachim Murat, and halted again in November 1820 when the dome collapsed. Giuliano de Fazio took over with revised plans; the church opened for worship on 17 May 1834, the dome was finished in 1872, and Cardinal Guglielmo Sanfelice consecrated it on 1 February 1880.
The church preserves the relics of Saint Felicius, a martyr, and of the Servant of God Giuseppe Ottone. Two confraternities are housed in its flanking structures: the Archconfraternity of Saints Augustine and Monica, whose earlier chapel was demolished to build the church, and the Royal Confraternity of the Most Holy Sacrament.
The church stands near the Strada Regia delle Calabrie, in the Terravecchia district. The forecourt is paved in lava stone and bordered by a balustrade of white marble pillars. Inside, a left-hand chapel holds the stair down to the hypogeum, and a left exit before the transept opens onto via Talamo.
The church preserves a 14th-century Byzantine-style panel of the Virgin surrounded by the Apostles, donated by King Ferdinand II, whose painter is unknown. It hangs in the chapel to the right of the central left chapel, near the stair to the hypogeum.
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