Madonna del Cuore

Church located in the Madonna del Cuore district, usually open in May

beautiful little church dedicated to the Madonna open to worship even if it remains closed for a good part of the year. The month of May is open

On the edge of Camporeatino, along the straight road that led out of Porta Cintia and still leads north today without the hesitation of a curve, a chapel was built in the seventeenth century named after the Madonna dei Frustati, since on its churchyard there were conducted with whiplash those who stained themselves with minor faults. The first documentation dates back to 1633, and attests to the existence of a modest hermitage whose host cared for the maintenance of the place of worship. The Palio dell'Assunta, which was celebrated by alternating three different itineraries, included the church of the Madonna dei Frustati among its destinations where the career horses turned galloping along the road that would lead them back to the cathedral where the winner would have qualified. With the dawn of the contemporary age, it would have been the young offspring of the rampant bourgeoisie to use the church as a destination for their horse businesses. But in the meantime, between 1805 and 1808, the original chapel was enlarged taking on neoclassical, linear and harmonious forms, embellished by the small bell tower. The bishop Saverio Ermenegildo Marini, in deference to the authorization of the cult conferred by Pope Pius VII, was named after the Madonna del Cuore. A few years later, the brotherhood of the Most Holy Heart of Mary and of Saint Isidore, patron saint of farmers, was established there. The names of the adepts of the confraternity, men and women, are inscribed on the walls of the sacristy, in the black painted profiled tables. The activity of the confraternity leaves a sensitive trace in the processional banner in which the Madonna in majesty who carries the immaculate heart in hand receives the homage of the farmer Isidoro, while an angel guides the plow on the cultivated field. The iconographic theme was taken up and interpreted by the local painter Loreto Deli in 1903, who added by symmetry the figure of Saint Anthony of Padua, also very dear to the devotion of the farmers of the plain. A few more years, and the construction of the Supertessile factory with the creation of the workers' quarter and the boarding schools that would house the workers coming mostly from the Veneto region, would have radically changed the social structure of this district which still takes its name today. from the church of the Madonna del Cuore. Professor Ileana Tozzi