Minor basilica with a neoclassical structure, started as a civil forum under Joachim Murat was completed by Ferdinand IV of Bourbon on his return to Naples, converted into a church and dedicated to the saint who brought him back to the throne of the Two Sicilies.
Under the basilica of San Francesco di Paola there is a hypogeum of over a thousand square meters.
This underground environment branches between tunnels and corridors around a vast circular room, with a vaulted roof supported by a mushroom structure, which overall has the same dimensions as the upper church.
The grandeur and architectural quality of these vast spaces, freed from debris during a restoration carried out during 2018, suggest that the hypogeum was destined, once completed in the decorations, to house the Bourbon tombs, until then housed in the basilica of Santa Chiara; a theory that seems to find confirmation also in the words of some nineteenth-century authors, such as the architect Camillo Napoleone Sasso, Chiarini and Eugenio Balbi.
However, the reasons that prevented the realization of the project remain unknown; it has been hypothesized that the sovereigns have had second thoughts due to the fact that the church of Santa Chiara was historically more linked to the Bourbon dynasty, and that, shortly thereafter, the unification of Italy made all intent definitively set.
Royal Pontifical Basilica of San Francesco di Paola
Address: Piazza del Plebiscito
Phone:
Site:
Location inserted by
Simone Florio