© Jeff Matthews entry Sept. 2003
The
Church of San Paolo Maggiore is on via dei
Tribunali, one of the three original
east-west thoroughfares of the Greek city of Neapolis. As such, it is a
simultaneous lesson in the history of Naples, the
history of Neapolitan architecture and the history of
at least a bit of religion. The church stands above a
spectacular stairway, and, in the form you see today,
was built at the end of the sixteenth century.
However, it was erected on the ruins of a preexisting
eighth-century church built to celebrate a Neapolitan
sea victory over Saracen
invaders. [For a separate item on early Christian
churches in Naples, click here].
That church, in turn, was built on the site of, and
even incorporated part of the structure of, a Greek
Temple dedicated to Castor and Pollux. There are still
two columns of this temple left intact within the
present-day church, anachronistically connected to a
late 16th century facade. It is precisely this
out-of-time aspect which is so characteristic of
Neapolitan architecture. There is fascinating
and undeniable confusion, especially in the
original center of the city; perhaps this is an
unavoidable phenomenon when 2,500 years of
architecture have to coexist.
The most
important work of art within the church is the
sacristy with the fresco done in 1690 by the great
Neapolitan painter of the Baroque, Francesco Solimena. Other
works, such as the fresco of The Dedication of the
Temple of Solomon are more recent in the history
of the church, dating back to the first years of Bourbon rule in the 1730s.
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