Duomo di Benevento
Visit information may be outdated.
The Duomo di Benevento is Benevento's cathedral, also known as Santa Maria de Episcopio, standing on the site of the city's first Christian church where the Roman capitol once stood. For readers in Campania it brings together Lombard, medieval, and wartime history in one building: a late-medieval facade and bell tower survived the 1943 bombings, while most of what stands today is a post-war reconstruction inaugurated in 1965, with a crypt and an underground archaeological route preserving far older layers.
The cathedral's history begins with the Lombard Duchy of Benevento and continues through the Middle Ages to the Second World War. Allied air raids on 12 and 14 September 1943 destroyed the building, leaving the facade and bell tower standing. Those surviving parts were restored in the 1950s and 1960s, and the rebuilt cathedral was inaugurated on 28 June 1965. What remains from before the war gives the visit its focus. The facade dates from the late 13th century and is built in white marble in a style influenced by Pisan architecture, with arcades, decorated columns, a rose window, and a mosaic of the Mystic Lamb. The bronze Janua Maior door was cast in the third quarter of the 12th century; restored in the 1990s, the original is kept inside the cathedral, with a full copy placed on the facade in 2012. Below the church, the crypt preserves remains of the primitive church and fragments of 14th-century frescoes. Excavations begun in 2005 uncovered layers from prehistory and the Samnite period through the Roman, early Christian, medieval, and modern periods. An archaeological route beneath the modern floor, inaugurated in 2012, follows remains associated with earlier places of worship on the same site.
Practical information
- Type
- Religious site
- Area
- Sannio & Benevento
- Official site
- https://www.diocesidibenevento.it/cattedrale
- Also known as
- Cattedrale metropolitana di Santa Maria de Episcopio, Cattedrale Maria Santissima Assunta