Museo Cappella Sansevero in Naples, Naples, Italy | Museum
The origins of the Sansevero Chapel are linked to a legendary episode. Cesare d'Engenio Caracciolo recounts in 'Sacred Naples' of 1624 that at the end of the 16th century an innocent man who was dragged to jail in chains, passed in front of the garden of the de Sangro palace where he saw a part of the garden wall crumble and that an image of the Blessed Virgin appear.
At the sight of this image the man promised to give a silver medallion to the Madonna if he was proven innocent: in fact, shortly thereafter he was set free and he immediately held to his promise. From that moment onwards the sacred image became a place many more blessing.
Years later, Giovan Francesco Paolo de Sangro, first Prince of Sansevero, was very sick and he too went to the Madonna in search of a cure: in thanks for having been granted a miracle, where the venerable effigy appeared for the first time (now located above the Main Altar), he erected a small chapel the Santa Maria dell Pietà chapel or 'Pietatella'. Since about 1590 that place of worship also became a sojourn of the noble family.
Years later the son Alessandro, Patriarch of Alexandria and Archbishop of Benevento, began modifying and transforming the Chapel into a real votive temple - whose perimeter corresponds to the current one - and inside he placed several tombs of his ancestors inside the Museo Cappella Sansevero.
