Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore e San Simmaco (Duomo)

Founded in 432 by San Simmaco, bishop of Capua, the cathedral of Santa Maria Capua Vetere grew from a paleochristian basilica into a five-naved church whose eighteenth-century facade conceals a mix of styles and artworks — and the memory of a peace treaty sworn here in 787.

Why it matters

Chief church of the city that continues ancient Capua, the cathedral has foundations reaching back to the first centuries of Christianity in Campania. The municipality's account dates the basilica to 432, when Simmaco, bishop of Capua and patron of the town, dedicated it to the Mother of God in the wake of the Council of Ephesus — a theological statement set in stone only a few years after that council proclaimed the doctrine. The state heritage catalogue counts the fifth-century duomo among the principal monuments raised on the ruins of ancient Capua. Inside, the church keeps the record of its long life: an early Christian crypt in its oldest layers, the five-naved plan that Duke Arechi II gave it, and a baroque and neoclassical dressing applied when later centuries reordered the interior. It remains an active parish of the Archdiocese of Capua, the cathedral in all but name for its city.

What to notice

The eighteenth-century facade conceals a mixture of styles and works of art that reflects the building’s history. The five-naved plan is among the church’s most notable features. Following a vow, Arechi II enlarged the church by adding the fourth and fifth aisles, according to the chronicle tradition the municipality cites, producing the five-naved layout of a Carolingian-age expansion wrapped around an older core. The crypt belongs to that earliest Christian phase of the site. The ancient apse once carried paleochristian mosaics with the image of the Mother of God and the founder's dedication, documented before the eighteenth-century rebuilding destroyed them. Six heavy pillars, a raised vault and the coffered ceiling of the nave record the baroque and neoclassical campaigns in sequence.

Context and history

The basilica took over the cathedral role after the destruction of the earlier churches of ancient Capua — the constantinian basilica of Saint Peter and the germaniana of Saints Stephen and Agatha — leaving this church of the Madonna as the seat that survived. From the ninth century it kept a canonical chapter and appears in documents as Sancta Maria Syricorum; even after the diocese's centre moved to the neighbouring city, it retained the throne of the bishop and functioned as a de facto concathedral alongside the Duomo of Capua, a rare arrangement that explains its double dignity today. The building saw high politics as well: in 787 Arechi II met Charlemagne here and stipulated a peace treaty, a diplomatic encounter the municipality records among the church's milestones. The early medieval vow that widened the nave count, the sixteenth-century masonry vaulting and Tridentine reordering of the presbytery, the seventeenth-century absorption of the atrium and the Del Balzo enlargement, and the eighteenth-century re-edification that gave the present facade form one continuous building site across more than a millennium. In 1992 Pope John Paul II celebrated a function here, the most recent of the church's recorded public honours.