Santissima Annunziata
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The Basilica of the Santissima Annunziata Maggiore is a church in Naples in southern Italy.
The Annunziata's origins goes back to 1320 and has always been, in one form or another, an orphanage. Remade a first time in the early 16th century, by the mid 17th century, it was a full-fledged home, church, hospital, and school for such children. In the 1750s, under Charles III, the entire premises were remodeled by a team of architects that included Ferdinando Fuga, who also built the giant Royal Hospice for the Poor, and Luigi Vanvitelli. The façade of the church is by Vanvitelli, as is the dome. The gray and white interior is a sober statement of "anti-Baroque", with a theme of coupled Corinthian columns under an unbroken entablature; paired ribs carry the columns upwards in skeletal semi-circular arches that articulate the coffered barrel vaulting. There are works by Giuseppe Sanmartino, the sculptor of the famed Veiled Christ in the Sansevero Chapel.
The church plays an important role in the lore of the city of Naples. As an orphanage, it was a famous "drop-off" point for abandoned infants, who were placed into a revolving basket container from the street outside the walls of the church on the street. The basket could then be turned such that infant wound up within the church where nuns would then receive and register the new addition to the orphanage. (The "basket room" has been restored and visitors may see how the operation was handled.) The church functioned as an orphanage until the 1950s at which time state social services took over the task.
The Santissima Annunziata is also the burial place for Giovanni Villani (1276–1348), the first great historical chronicler of Florence who died of the Black Death.
