Church of San Domenico

The story

The Dominicans had been in Cosenza since around 1240. The present church, built at the wish of the Sanseverino family, dates from the mid-fifteenth century: sources give works between 1441 and 1468, and record that in 1448 Count Antonio Sanseverino handed his palace and the neighbouring land over to the friars. Consecration is thought to have taken place in 1468. Two parts of the original façade survive: the pointed-arch porch and the medieval rose window, with sixteen small columns arranged like spokes.

Later centuries reshaped the building. An inscription carved at the top of the wooden portal gives the year 1614, and the door is carved with coats of arms, floral motifs and saints. Inside, late-Baroque stucco, completed in 1758 by the Neapolitan Pascale Gesumaria, sits alongside a wooden choir from the first half of the 1600s and a dome on an octagonal drum, raised between the late 1600s and early 1700s. The convent housed a Dominican Studium generale, where the young Tommaso Campanella was sent to study in 1588.

What to look for

On the façade, look for the rose window with its sixteen small columns and, under the medieval porch, the wooden portal of 1614 with coats of arms, flowers and saints. Inside, note the Madonna della Febbre attributed to Giovanni da Nola (1540) and the wooden choir, originally of 52 stalls, by Fabrizio Volpe of Paterno.