Rocky Churches, God's caves - Monopoli City Tourism

Madonna del soccorso

The proper church is 6 metres under the Carbineers barracks (the former Dominican Convent). Before entering, it is worth stopping and looking up: you will see the christogram. It was the first Christian symbol legitimized by the Roman Emperor Constantine and stamped on coins and military banners. It has a clear oriental origin, but also has the Greek letters “χ” and “ρ”, initials of the word “unto” (khristòs in Greek). On its sides there is also the first letter of the Greek alphabet, a capital alpha (A) and the last one, the lowercase omega (ω), because Jesus is the beginning and the end as the Apocalypse reports (John, verses 1:8, 21:6 and 22:13). Above it there is the sculptural group called “Family of donors”. It’s a bas-relief granted to the sculptor Stefano da Putignano (1470-1540) who embodied the rebirth of sculptural art in Puglia using painted stones. It represents a child holding a shelf and on its sides two people kneeling, one male and one female. In the middle, a recently added metal crown, a sculptural element dating back to 1517, more likely a salvaged element of the ancient church of Santa Maria La Nova alle Fontanelle destroyed in the 16th century probably during the siege of Marchese del Vasto (1528-1529). It was probably an element of the sculptural group “Madonna Enthroned with Child” which is now placed in the highest part of the façade of the church of San Domenico. This triptych even enchanted the famous art critic Vittorio Sgarbi during his visits to the town. In a room underground, you will find a baroque altar, an element clearly added in the eighteenth century because the origins of this churchis bi-apsidal. The original entrance is still recognisable on the left wall. However, we are talking about times when the church stuck out over a tuff bank near the sea and was called San Pietro de Trochata (de Troccia or Troccica) as the papal bull of Pope Alexander III reports. In fact, a little window on the right hand side shone light on the Byzantine apse (bema).

Madonna della Stella

From the road running past the 19th-century cemetery it is possible to see two important cave churches. The first is Madonna della Stella, accessible from a secondary road on the right of the main street, 600 metres after the cemetery, follow the signs and the road on the left. The church is open on Saturdays from morning to evening and every day during May. The entrance is 2 metres lower than road level. When you go down, you can see on the right the ancient stairway carved into the rock. Once you enter, you will notice a single rectangular room with 3 altars. On the left the Holy Spirit and on the right the seventeenth-eighteenth century fresco of the Madonna della Stella.

Spirito santo

Continuing along the cemetery road and shortly before the state road 16, you will find an entrance with two stone columns leading to the door of a unique rocky church. The Holy Spirit is the church in the medieval hamlet Don Angelo, where the church was Byzantine with probably only one apsidal room, and with the entrance at the opposite side to where it is today.
Some changes were made when the Normans arrived, such as cap vaults which reproduce the crypt of a Roman church into the tuff and maybe that of the then cathedral of Monopoli when Romualdo was bishop. It’s one of the few rocky churches where its charming decorations and architecture remain unchanged. Until the procession of Pentecost (fiftieth in Greek), every Thursday, for 50 days after Easter, the rosary is prayed after a pilgrimage on foot of prayer and penitence, with people sometimes kneeling and eating bitter herbs. The Holy Spirit is thus a mystic place to pray, made up of mostly women who once wore black. The closeness to the cemetery, the cult of rosary and Pentecost made this church among the most popular in the area, inhabited since the Bronze Age, repopulated in the late Roman age or early medieval confirming that this corner of Monopoli has the same value as an eternal city, with houses, depositories and cisterns for water.

Lo Spirito Santo più che una chiesa è una vera e propria basilica rupestre, scavata con perizia tecnica davvero unica. L’aula sacra è suddivisa in tre navate, scandite da 4 colonne e 2 pilastri sui quali poggiano archi a tutto sesto che delimitano 12 campate con volta a crociera. Mancano 2 colonne di appoggio della crociera davanti all’altare. Di fattura modesta, ma originale, sono le colonne con capitello provvisto di collarino, crochet a foglie arrotondate o con rilievi di figure umane e abaco. L’icnografia dell’ipogeo è alquanto singolare, infatti sull’aula basilicale s’innesta, nella zona del presbiterio, un altro ambiente che all’insieme conferisce una pianta a “L”. Segno che la chiesa ha avuto bisogno nel corso dei tempi di più ampliamenti per accogliere sempre più fedeli. È interessante notare come l’attuale scalinata d’ingresso è seguita, sul lato sinistro, da un sedile litoide scanalato con funzione di convogliare e far defluire l’acqua. La chiesa è diventata di proprietà comunale a seguito della donazione effettuata dai fratelli Grattagliano. È stata restaurata nel 2011 grazie alla Fondazione San Domenico e alla Cassa di Risparmio di Puglia. Alle pareti, sul lato destro della chiesa rupestre, in 3 ampi archi ciechi traspare il volto di due santi anonimi con i piedi dalle dita affusolate, che facevano parte del corredo parietale originario dell’ipogeo. Nella nicchia centrale, dietro le tende, si notano tracce di raffigurazione, molto deteriorate, con un fedele adorante. Altra figura appena visibile è quella di un Santo monaco con barba. Gli altri due dipinti, la Madonna in trono con Bambino, sull’altare frontale alle navate, ridipinta forse su una icona precedente, e il Cristo in croce con in basso quelle che sembrano le anime del Purgatorio. Oltre al Cristo in croce è riconoscibile il Padre eterno e lo Spirito Santo. Un dipinto devozionale a giudicare dalla scritta che è alla base in cui si riconoscono le date che vanno dal 22 maggio 1800 al 1920.

San Giorgio

Along the royal road of the Postman which connected the Salento area to Bari, there is the only rocky church so close to the sea and to a part of via Traiana. We are very close to the beach of Porto Giardino, shortly before Capitolo. It hides a carved space but with no frescos. Anyway, the outside façade is the more interesting part, a series of particularly impressive hypnotizing concentric circles towards the central oculus which represents God’s eye watching over the road which leads to Egnazia. Stonemasons have reproduced a Romanesque rose window in the rock just as if the church had been built and not carved.
Nobody knows if the church was dedicated to a saint, but experts have called it San Giorgio like the close defensive tower now in ruins. The arch above the entrance is a kind of narthex, a symbol of repentance and punishment, placed for protecting catechumens who couldn’t follow the Eucharistic liturgy.

Paterno e Lamalunga

Continuing south bound on the state road 16, near Contrada L’Assunta, you will find the hamlet of Paterno and the church della Trinità with its destroyed walls. The Lamalunga road will take you to the rock settlement of Lamalunga. The rocky church of Sant’Avenzio is carved into a hidden tuff spur on the left side of the hamlet, which was mostly demolished around the mid-1980’s in order to plant an olive grove. It’s a little chapel with a single nave divided into shrine and bema by an iconostasis carved in the tuff. Inside there are frescoes depicting San Nicola, San Filippo and San Lorenzo or Santo Stefano and San Vito. At the entrance there are two scenes welcome visitors: the Annunciation and the Madonna enthroned. The Deesis is very interesting, depicting the Virgin and San Giovanni Battista who is praying to Christ Pantocrator, placed in the arcosolium of the apse with two deacons with the Gospel in their hands with the inscription: «Ego sum Lux Mundi…» (I am the light of the world) on its sides.

San Andrea e San Procopio

To reach the rock settlement of San Andrea and San Procopio, you have to travel along the bypass of the state road 16 on the sea side. A dirt road on the right after the railway line, leads to a red nineteenth-century house known as Masseria Rosati. The rocky church is owned by the family who live in the farm, so you need to ask them the permission to visit it, which is considered to be the cathedral of the local rock churches because of its internal architecture and its façade with three different entrances. The distinctive trait is the epigraph of the façade sculpted by presbyter Redelberto. One can read on it that the little hypogeous temple was sculpted by Giovanni, master manufacturer and deacon, helped by his son, the presbyter Giacinto. The church was dug thanks to the will of some noble owners, Giovanni, abbot Alfano, Pietro and Paolo. The permit was granted by Pietro, bishop of Monopoli (between 1071 and 1076) and the church was consecrated on the 2nd of November and dedicated to St Andrew Apostle and martyr Procopius, a western saint and an eastern saint curiously together in a Bizantyne church just a few decades after the schism between the Eastern and Western churches (1054). It could be an isolated witness of a unanimous will to mend a liturgical rift whose echo has arrived up to the present day. The cult for San Procopio da Cesarea is very interesting, who was the first martyr of Palestine under Diocletian in 303 A.D.