Church / Sanctuary of the Crucifix of the Pietà

Cultural religious site

The baroque church of the Crucifix was built from 1683 to 1694, built on the site of a first church, erected following the discovery of an image of the Crucifixion. When the first church located there collapsed in 1682, the lamp that illuminated the sacred icon remained miraculously lit encouraging the construction of the second church that received in 1796 the Bull of election to Sanctuary by Pope Pius VI. Open for worship April 21, 1694, it was finished in internal works 1696. In the construction of the church, workers from all over the Salento area were hired, on which Giuseppe Zimbalo stands.
The facade is divided into three orders. In the first order there is a carved wooden portal made 1696 from April Petrachi by Melendugno. Laterally and in the other two orders there are the stone statues of the evangelist saints, of St. Peter the Apostle and of St. Paul, of St. Sebastian and of St. John the Baptist, of the Guardian Angel and of St. Michael the Archangel. The interior is in Baroque style, with a mixture of golden decorative elements and grandiose canvases that narrate the miracles operated by the Crucifix of the Pietà.
The factory has the shape of a Latin cross with four chapels on each side of the nave. The last chapel on the right side houses the organ and the carved and gilded fiery opera choir. The wooden ceiling is formed by 60 octagonal tiles. In the transept there is an octagonal dome supported by four pillars in which the statues of the church’s doctors live in as many niches: S. Agostino, S. Girolamo, S. Ambrogio, S. Gregorio. The paintings reproduce the theme of the finding of the cross by S. Elena. In the sacristy there is the canvas of the “handing over of the keys to St. Peter” by Bartolomeo Vimercati (1646) which was part of the pictorial equipment of the first church built in 1623 and collapsed in 1683.