"On Via Argento stands the church of Santa Maria del Suffragio, more commonly known as the Purgatorio, dating from the early 18th century, with a wooden compartmentalised door and a geometric, conceptual representation of the Triumph of Death. The panels of the door identify and objectivise, in the upper area, the emblems of power and, in the lower, the tools of labour. Flattening out and making the social pyramid horizontal is death, portrayed in the two central skeletons, which are mirrors of each other, and therefore invite us to guess, given the importance the world confers on them, which of them had the lot, in life, of holding the crown of a king or the hat of a cardinal, and which of them had to bear, with the weight of the hoe, the even greater burden of poverty". 1
"The church is in the form of a Latin cross with five altars, the high altar of which is in the classic Baroque style, made of Lecce stone. In the small garden of the sacristy, a flight of steps leads to a crypt, an underground burial ground that belonged to the church and in which the brethren and their closest relatives were buried. Inside, skeletons of confreres who died in the 18th and 19th centuries are preserved in reliquaries. On the high altar is a painting by the Neapolitan Paolo De Matteis, depicting Our Lady of Mount Carmel'. 2

The Church of the Purgatory in L. Russo's 'Rosa Centofoglie

Scholars report, 'Results of analyses on the Purgatory mummies'.

During the meeting, held on 13 November 2015, scholars from the University of Bari and Dario Piombino Mascali, curator of the Capuchin Catacombs in Palermo, unveiled the secrets of the 18th-century mummies in the Purgatory Church. The first results of the analysis following the inspection of the mummies on 1 September 2015 were announced, as well as unpublished news for the only child mummy in Apulia, Plautilla Indelli

Giacomo Campanelli, Monopoli tourist guide, Schena publisher 1989
2 Francesco Lillo, Monopoli 'In the heart of Apulia.

📍Get to Church

CREDITS: Comune di Monopoli.