Visit to the Sanctuary of the Madonna dei latteri to close the month of May to Maria

The Sanctuary of Maria Santissima dei Lattani is a Marian sanctuary located in the territory of the municipality of Roccamonfina, in Campania.

History

The sanctuary was founded in 1430 by San Bernardino da Siena and San Giacomo della Marca, who had arrived there following the news of the discovery of a statue of the Virgin in the same or previous year. A first rural chapel was built, then a first church, enlarged shortly after in its current forms between 1448 and 1507.

In 1446 Pope Eugene IV entrusted the convent, built in the meantime, to the Franciscans.

In March 1970 the sanctuary was elevated by Pope Paul VI to the dignity of a minor basilica.

Description

The buildings of the sanctuary open onto a large internal courtyard, open to the panorama. It overlooks the church, the convent and a building built at the time of its foundation, called "Protoconventino" or "hermitage of San Bernardino", recently restored in its original forms.

The facade of the church, preceded by a large prothyrum with a round arch, preserves the original wooden door from 1507. The interior, with a single nave, divided into spans by pillars that support the cross vault with a low pointed arch, preserves fifteenth and eighteenth century frescoes and Gothic windows with polychrome windows. On the left there is the chapel dedicated to the Virgin of the Lattans, with a frescoed dome, which houses a statue of the Madonna and Child in basaltic stone, covered with polychrome painting, perhaps attributable to the ninth century. The convent has a facade with arched portico and inside a rectangular cloister with pointed arches supported by columns of various shapes, on two floors. There are seventeenth-century frescoes painted by his father Tommaso di Nola. The refectory opens onto the cloister.

The so-called "Protoconventino" building overlooks the internal courtyard with a two-story loggia, open towards the valley with windows, the lower one decorated with a rose window.

In the courtyard there is also a stone fountain and on the side towards the mountain a fifteenth-century fountain decorated in 1961 by a depiction on colored ceramic.