In Puglianello, a small town in the province of Benevento, a church demolished fifty years ago has returned to the center of community life — through a book.
Ferdinando Creta's volume, "Memoria Sacra e Fratture Urbane. La Chiesa di San Giacomo Apostolo di Puglianello," reconstructs the history of the former Church of San Giacomo Apostolo, demolished in 1976. According to NTR24, the research draws on archival sources, photographs, preserved artworks and community testimonies.
For centuries, the church had served as a religious, social and communal reference point for Puglianello. Creta traces its story through earlier periods of crisis, including the seventeenth-century difficulties, the plague and the earthquakes of 1688 and 1702.
The account follows the church's rebuilding in the eighteenth century and its nineteenth-century expansion, when altars, artworks, statues, furnishings and a bell tower were added.
The book was presented in Puglianello's new Church of San Giacomo Apostolo. The presentation brought together the author, art historian Massimo Bignardi, local and provincial representatives, church representatives and Archbishop Giuseppe Mazzafaro.
Beyond the history of a lost building, the book treats the demolished church as part of Puglianello's collective memory and urban transformation — a place that no longer stands, but still shapes how the town understands itself.
