Chiesa del Carmine

Three streets from the Ducal Palace, the Chiesa del Carmine is Martina Franca's richly decorated Baroque church. Built for the Carmelites between 1727 and about 1758, it brings curving façades and sculpted ornament into the architecture of the Itria Valley.

Why it matters

The church records the reach of Neapolitan Baroque in this part of Puglia. The Carmelites had been in Martina Franca since the early seventeenth century, near a sixteenth-century chapel of the Madonna della Misericordia. The church's designer is not known; the municipality records Mauro Manieri as a possible architect.

What to notice

The façade combines curving and truncated pediments, sweeping volutes and a broken tympanum above the portal. A glory encloses a clay image of the Madonna del Carmine. Statues of Carmelite saints occupy the niches, and the upper pediment carries the order's emblem of palm, lily and star. The church's single nave and two side chapels per side open beneath an octagonal dome. Most altars use painted local stone; the high altar, consecrated in 1759 by Archbishop Francesco Saverio Stabile, is made of polychrome marble.

The interior contains a Madonna della Libera by Giovanni Stefano Caramia, dated 1660; a Deposition by Suor Maria di Gesù Martucci, dated 1744; and a 1720 altarpiece by Leonardo Antonio Olivieri. In the sacristy, walnut inlaid cupboards from 1773 are attributed to Martino Marinosci. A polychrome stone Madonna is attributed to the circle of Renaissance sculptor Stefano da Putignano; local tradition connects a hole in its cloak with an arquebus shot during the siege of June 1529.

Context and history

Frate Pietro Tommaso Carbotti laid the first stone on 15 March 1727. The façade inscription “A SOLO ERECTA / 1730” marks completion of the lower order, while the church's construction continued until about 1758. The adjoining convent, begun in 1614, was rebuilt over the centuries. After the Napoleonic suppression of religious orders, Liguorini fathers carried out faux-marble stucco decoration between 1859 and 1865. The building passed to a confraternity in 1886, which continues to shape its devotional life.