This year for the occasion it will be possible to visit the Church and Museum of San Leonardo, a small artistic treasure dating back to the end of the sixteenth century and the beginning of the seventeenth century, usually closed to the public.

 

The cycle of visits will be led by young student volunteers from the “G. Galilei – Curie” and the “Vito Sante Longo” Technical Institute.

 

Here are the opening times for both days:

Saturday: 10:00 – 13:00 / 15:30 – 18:30 (last entry at 18:00)

Sunday: 10:00 – 13:00 / 15:00 – 19:00 (last entry at 18:30)

 

To access the visits, simply show up on site during the opening hours indicated.

The church of San Leonardo, annexed to the former cloistered monastery of the Black Benedictines, was built to a design by the Salento architect Mauro Manieri, begun in 1722, completed in 1745 in place of the first building from the end of the 16th century. The bell tower dates back to from 1721. The façade of the church, divided into three parts by two string course frames, houses in the lower part a large portal in whose tympanum the statue of San Benedetto is inserted among cherubs, festoons and shells, in late Baroque style.

On the upper façade of the bell tower, towards the sea, the papal tiara and the apostolic keys are sculpted. On the external wall overlooking Via Ginnasio, two niches house the headless statue of Saint Scolastica and that of Saint Benedict, tutelary saints of the Benedictine order, sculptures attributed to Manieri. The church reveals compositional harmony in the baroque architectural layout.

Inside it is divided into a single nave with a cross-vaulted ceiling along which six altars are arranged: here too you can see Ionic and Corinthian elements intertwined with other baroque ones. The presbytery area features a series of 16th and 17th century paintings from the Venetian and Neapolitan schools along the walls. The main altar of Neapolitan workmanship, attributed to the workshop of Aniello Gentile, is combined with a majolica floor composed of square "riggiole" of various colors which in the center offers a piece of landscape on which the raven of St. Benedict stands out. Below the Church there is a crypt attributed to San Michele Arcangelo "de grecis", mentioned in the bull of Pope Alexander III of 1180, probably used for a previous Orthodox cult. It seems that the apostle Saint Peter, who passed through Monopoli around the year 43 AD, preached inside the crypt. C. Along the women's gallery, two hundred sacred objects are displayed which are part of the museum collection (silver, crucifixes, reliquaries, coffin covers, missals) set up by the Confraternity of St. Joseph which has resided here since 1904, when it took charge of the renovation of the building and the furnishings.

The monastery, whose construction can be dated between the end of the 16th and the beginning of the 17th century, was renovated by the cloistered nuns in 1737, as attested by a corner cartouche on the corner between Via San Leonardo and Chiasso San Leonardo. It welcomed within its walls the aristocratic girls of the city of Monopoli until the end of the 19th century, when the last nuns abandoned the complex. The monastery was used for public purposes, hosting different types of schools over time. The Confraternity of San Giuseppe moved inside the church, having had its residence in the seventeenth-century chapel of San Giuseppe, near the Amalfi Church, partly demolished in the early thirties of the last century, but at the end of the nineteenth century, considered given the now logistical limitations due to the growing cult of the popular Saint, the possibility of a move was increasingly thought about, which ended in 1904 at this current accommodation.