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Chiesa di Santa Barbara (en)
Route: Fede
Chiesa di Santa Barbara (en)


The chapel, dedicated to Santa Barbara, was built in the thirteenth and fourteenth century, inside a feminine convention complex of Clarisse and Benedictine, of which ruins in the vicinity are used for agricultural purposes. The facade has an entrance door with a monolithic architrave surmounted by a lunette, probably once painted. Above the lunette was a rose window, now occluded by blocks of tuff. The chapel has a unique rectangular interior plan with a semicircular apse. The latter appears barred by tuff blocks, from the destruction of the apse, facing east. Along the north wall is a door that connected the church with the adjacent monastic area.  Traces of preserved frescoes are really rare: on the northern wall are traces of a Deesis: Mary, Christ and St. John the Baptist, relevant to the first phase of decoration, still of a Byzantine style, from the beginning of the fourteenth century. Other traces, including a well-preserved image of a saint, date back to mid-fourteenth century. On the southern wall are two full-length Saints: Santa Barbara, with her usual iconographic attribute of the tower in the right hand, and San Bernardino of Siena, certainly from the mid-fifteenth century.  
Strada di Santa Barbara, Montesardo, Alessano

bibliography sources:
A. Jacob, A. Caloro (a cura di), Luoghi, chiese e chierici del Salento meridionale in età moderna. La visita apostolica della città e della diocesi di Alessano nel 1628, Martina Franca 1999. M. Falla Castelfranchi, La chiesa di S. giovanni Battista e le cosiddette “Centopietre” a Patù, in G. Bertelli (a cura di), Puglia preromanica. Dal V secolo agli inizi del XI, Bari 2004, pp. 269-274. S. Ortese, Un caso di “patrimonio latente”: la chiesetta di Santa Barbara a Montesardo e le sue pitture murali, Kronos 11, 2007, pp. 67-77.

historical information:
The monastery was completely abandoned, so much that in 1590 the bishop Ercole Lamia, in his report of the pastoral visit at the parish of Montesardo, did not make any mention of it. The monastic buildings annexed to the church have been transformed in the following centuries, when they were inhabited by settlers and degraded into rural environments as a warehouse or stables, and collapsing later on.   The chapel was regularly visited until the eighteenth century, when it became property of the laity and was used for agricultural purposes.  
Info
property:
Municipal
managing body:
Comune di Alessano
accessibility:
Inaccesible
conservation:
Bad . In restoration
period of construction:
XIII-XIV century
historical information:
The monastery was completely abandoned, so much that in 1590 the bishop Ercole Lamia, in his report of the pastoral visit at the parish of Montesardo, did not make any mention of it. The monastic buildings annexed to the church have been transformed in the following centuries, when they were inhabited by settlers and degraded into rural environments as a warehouse or stables, and collapsing later on.   The chapel was regularly visited until the eighteenth century, when it became property of the laity and was used for agricultural purposes.  
bibliography sources:
A. Jacob, A. Caloro (a cura di), Luoghi, chiese e chierici del Salento meridionale in età moderna. La visita apostolica della città e della diocesi di Alessano nel 1628, Martina Franca 1999. M. Falla Castelfranchi, La chiesa di S. giovanni Battista e le cosiddette “Centopietre” a Patù, in G. Bertelli (a cura di), Puglia preromanica. Dal V secolo agli inizi del XI, Bari 2004, pp. 269-274. S. Ortese, Un caso di “patrimonio latente”: la chiesetta di Santa Barbara a Montesardo e le sue pitture murali, Kronos 11, 2007, pp. 67-77.
telephone number:
+390833782715
num gps:
62
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