Piazza Giuseppe Garibaldi (e Piazzetta degli Artisti)

Atripalda opens its historic centre at Piazza Giuseppe Garibaldi, an open square where the town hall, a Dominican-era church and a confraternity chapel face a smaller companion space, the Piazzetta degli Artisti. Together they house the civic and religious institutions of the old town.

Why it matters

The square brings together three institutions that shaped the town's civic and religious life. The Palazzo Civico, Santa Maria delle Grazie and the confraternity chapel embody three facets of local life: administration, worship and community.

What to notice

The facades around the square and Piazzetta degli Artisti reflect the town's institutional history. The Palazzo Civico occupies the former convent of the Dominican fathers, whose complex the parish history credits with a pre-eminent role in the historic centre since its presumed foundation between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries. The church of Santa Maria delle Grazie, three naves with a sober, elegant line and notable baroque decoration, was the family chapel and burial place of the Caracciolo, feudal lords of Atripalda from 1564; its fresco cycle celebrates both the Dominican order and the power of its patrons, who included Domiziano Caracciolo, duke of Atripalda, and his son Marino, distinguished at Lepanto. On the right of the transept lies the Renaissance tomb of Lucrezia Caracciolo, daughter of Domizio, the first duke, dated 1577, and a bell tower of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries rises beside the apse. The confraternity chapel inside the former convent — a rectangular room of about 7.5 by 6.5 metres raised above the cloister floor, with a portal of grey sandstone — once served the friars for electing their prior.

Context and history

The square's story is the story of the convent beside it. After the suppression of 1809 the complex passed to the Università di Atripalda, which used it successively as troop quarters, a district jail, the civic seat and a school until 1980; the earthquake of 23 November 1980 brought partial collapse, and the restored buildings now house municipal offices. The wider piazza retains the civic role that the convent's second life reinforced. Palazzo Caracciolo, built in the second half of the sixteenth century after the family acquired the fief in 1564, replaced the medieval castle of Truppoaldo — the fortified predecessor whose decline allowed the town to spread towards the plain around Sant'Ippolisto.