The story
On the night of 16 May 1964 a fire swept through the Baroque cathedral on the Rione Terra, the rocky headland at the heart of Pozzuoli, just west of Naples. When the smoke cleared, the burned walls revealed what they had wrapped for centuries, the marble columns of a Roman temple dedicated to the emperor Augustus, which had been turned into a church long before.
The restoration took fifty years. The cathedral of San Procolo reopened in 2014, still a working church, its ancient columns now visible beside the rebuilt Baroque spaces and modern glass.
For art lovers the draw is Artemisia Gentileschi, the Roman-born painter then working in Naples. Between 1635 and 1637 the bishop, Martín de León y Cárdenas, commissioned three large canvases from her for the choir. One shows Saint Januarius, patron of Naples, unharmed among the wild beasts in Pozzuoli's own amphitheatre. Another presents Saint Proculus, the town's patron saint, with his mother Nicaea, and the third is an Adoration of the Magi. Damaged in the fire, the paintings spent decades in Naples for conservation and were hung back in their places when the cathedral reopened.
