Chiesa di San Carlo

Beautiful Catholic place of worship.

The church of S. Carlo stands in the main square, which has been the seat of the market since the 1600s, where, perhaps, the Castle was built in previous centuries. The date of construction is not known, but already in the middle of the century. XVI there must have been a small building, with a single nave, covered by a dome, largely legible, transformed in 1763, with the overturning of the altar, in the Congrega di S. Gennaro (commissioned by the canon Giulio Foglia, depicted in a frescoed tondo) . The proximity of the Argenziano palace (and the women's gallery that still protrudes into the church today) had led to the hypothesis that it was born as a private noble chapel. And, instead, a document from 1638, published by the architect S. Costanzo, brings back its foundation "for the devotion of the people, the Governors and treasurers" of the AGP in whose assets it remained before passing to the Municipality. The collective function was immediately such as to accommodate even some meetings of popular assemblies (for example in 1652). The current appearance is due to the interventions, static and decorative, carried out by Gaetano Barba (1730-1806), the architect responsible for many other factories in Marcianise in the final years of the 18th century, and to the restorations of the early 20th century (which is due for example the decorative apparatus in stucco, marble and gold). In particular, Barba intervened on the façade (rebuilt from scratch) in its current, classical forms, and flanked by a bell tower, which did not exist before, built in the current forms and location to ensure the static balance of the main façade. The pilasters date back to the same intervention, perhaps dated to 1776 (as reported on the tread of the first step of the entrance staircase). The single nave, with arches resting on pillars leaning against the side walls, has a square presbytery, not protruding from the main body, on which the main altar rises. It preserves a wooden machine with columns and a broken tympanum (perhaps not pertinent to the painting it frames today) in the center of which is the seventeenth-century canvas depicting the Madonna and Child, St. Joseph, and, at the foot, among others, the saints Carlo Borromeo , Gennaro, Lorenzo, Domenico and Stefano. The ancient cone of the main altar, with "S. Carlo among the plague victims ", of Maltese, is today at the center of the wooden coffer (where it was placed in the early 1900s). Of great interest are also (entering from the left): the "Pentimento di S. Pietro" (on the Foglia altar dedicated in 1696), a painting depicting the Souls of Purgatory (today on the left wall, originally located on the right), a Madonna and Child with Holy Cardinal (18th century), a Madonna and Child with Saints by Oratius de Martinis (1709). The furnishings are completed by an eighteenth-century altar in polychrome marble, contemporary holy water stoups and a marble canopied pulpit (20th century).