🚌 How to go? Public transport: from Piazza Garibaldi take Linea 1 for Piscinola and drop off to Dante or Duomo
📌 When? Everyday (except Tuesdays): 9.00 – 19.00
💵 How much? Check this page
📧 Bookings: I highly recommend booking online as there are always crowds outside: click me
The VII Prince of Sansevero, in my opinion, was cool as fuck
The complex personality, cosmopolitan culture, the genius of an inventor, magical-alchemical studies, Masonic activism, and a deep sense of history made Raimondo de Sangro an extremely demanding patron, ready at any time to have any statue remade if it did not meet his full satisfaction, as each work had to perform an irreplaceable function in the overall iconographic project he envisioned, probably unknown even to the artists themselves. It is for this reason that in the Sansevero Chapel, as in no other monument, one perceives the presence of a patronage that, at times overshadowing every single artistic presence, authoritatively imposes itself infusing energy, coherence, suggestion, and a European breath throughout the complex.
This is how Raimondo is described in the small guide that you can buy inside the Chapel, cool, huh? But I imagined him as this crazy tinkerer experimenting with everything he could get his hands on, with pyrotechnics, alchemy, inventing iridescent colors with which the Chapel’s vault is painted – colors that are still vivid after 250 years, as if untouched by the passage of time.
I understand nothing about art, but the Sansevero Chapel moves even a simpleton like me
I had gone to the Sansevero Chapel specifically to see the anatomical machines; before delving into that, I would like to say a few words about the grandeur of the Sansevero Chapel in general: I find it unnecessary to join the crowd of bloggers and visitors who have minutely discussed every single work and detail of the Chapel. My only advice is to visit it because no photo or well-written paragraph will do justice to how truly powerful it is.
I am not an art lover, and I find it hard to emotionally engage with works or representations, but the Sansevero Chapel is an overwhelming experience: you enter, and a quantity of amazement falls on you that it is difficult, if not impossible, to remain impassive.
Back to our macabre interests…
Descending a few steps, we enter the arena of the Sansevero Chapel, and here we find our protagonists, beautifully displayed in two glass cases: the anatomical machines of a man and a woman.
Prince De Sangro, also passionate about medicine (as if he wasn’t already knowledgeable about a million things), purchased the male anatomical machine from the doctor Giuseppe Salerno, who was then also commissioned for the female anatomical machine.
These two macabre gems are crafted with such meticulousness (just think of the entire circulatory system, which is extremely faithful to the original) as to fuel a certain black legend, according to which Prince de Sangro had injected a strange liquid into the bodies of two of his servants to “crystallize” their circulatory system.
After investigations, the legend was debunked. The circulatory system was made with beeswax and dyes; however, the bones are real.
Initially, in addition to the two anatomical machines, there was also a third anatomical machine, placed at the feet of the female skeleton and later stolen: a fetus, complete with an open placenta tied with an umbilical cord.
I went for the horror, but I will return for the beauty
Well, friends, although I was initially moved by the desire to see the dark and unsettling side of this place, in the end, I was certainly happy with the morbid side but also very excited about the beautiful part. So, in short, 10/10, absolutely worth it.
