Sansevero Chapel

Behind this discreet door lies one of the most fascinating places in Naples. It is the funerary chapel of the Sangro family, Princes of Sansevero, begun in 1593. But the man who turned it into a legend was Raimondo di Sangro (1710-1771), the seventh prince: soldier, writer, Freemason, inventor and keen amateur chemist.

1Impossible marble

From the 1740s, Raimondo personally directed the decoration of the chapel. He commissioned Antonio Corradini to carve «Modesty», a woman covered by a transparent marble veil. And when Corradini died in 1752, he turned to Giuseppe Sanmartino for the Veiled Christ, finished in 1753: a dead Christ beneath a shroud so thin it looks as if you could lift it.

Popular tradition claimed that the prince had turned a real cloth into marble through his alchemical arts. Analysis has shown that it is carved marble.

2The anatomical machines

In the crypt there are two skeletons, a man and a woman, with the circulatory system reproduced in astonishing detail. They are the work of the physician Giuseppe Salerno, from the mid-18th century. From them sprang the darkest legend of all: that Raimondo injected a substance into two of his living servants to petrify their veins. There is no evidence whatsoever.

It was also said that he had Sanmartino blinded so that he could never repeat his masterpiece. Another invention: the sculptor kept working for decades.

3What to look for

• The Sangro coat of arms above the portal.
• The narrowness of the lane: a bridge once crossed overhead, linking the chapel to the family palace, until it collapsed in 1889.