CHIESA MADONNA DELLE GRAZIE

Information Sheet

📍 Location: San Lazzaro, Agerola, Italy
⛪ Dedicated to: Our Lady of Grace (Madonna delle Grazie)
📅 Period: 19th century (with earlier origins)
🎨 Style: Local religious architecture with Baroque influences
⭐ Highlights: Stone façade, bell tower, painting of Our Lady of Grace

Description

The Church of Our Lady of Grace features a single-nave layout divided by pillars supporting rounded arches, which open onto a series of small barrel-vaulted side chapels connected by narrow passageways. The interior is enriched by pilasters supporting a high entablature, above which large stained-glass windows fill the church with natural light.

The decorative scheme is elegant and refined, with gilded mouldings and ornamental details throughout. Above the main entrance stands a modest choir loft with a simple three-part balustrade, housing a historic pipe organ.

From the chapel beside the apse, visitors can access the Confession Chapel, an intimate room with a coffered ceiling, a colourful marble altar and a mosaic depicting sacred scenes. It also preserves a shrine containing a statue of the Dead Christ.

The church’s restrained stone façade is preceded by a broad staircase and framed by pilasters supporting a broken triangular pediment. The central portal is crowned by a circular stained-glass window, while the adjoining bell tower rises in three progressively narrower levels before ending with a pediment echoing the architectural style of the façade.

The flat ceiling of the nave is decorated with a large painting completed in 1973 by Father Macario, portraying Our Lady of Grace together with Saint Andrew and Saint Martin, the latter shown sharing his cloak with a poor man. The beautifully decorated dome rests on pendentives painted with the Four Cardinal Virtues—Justice, Prudence, Fortitude and Temperance. In the apse, visitors can admire a magnificent marble altar originally transferred from the ancient Teresian Monastery.

Did You Know?

The church stands in the main square of Campora, creating a striking architectural backdrop for visitors approaching San Lazzaro from the lower part of the village.

Dedicated to Our Lady of Grace, it was built on the site of an earlier chapel already documented in 1798. In 1867, the perimeter walls were reinforced, while at the end of the 19th century the church received its bell and small bell from the nearby Church of Santa Barbara.

It became a parish church in 1942 and has undergone several restoration campaigns over the years. The most significant renovations took place between 1972 and 1977, when much of the building and the bell tower were extensively rebuilt, giving the church much of its present appearance.