The church of Sant'Orsola, also known as Purgatory church, was built starting from the end of the 1500s and is a example of late Renaissance architecture in Baroque-Rococo style.
The construction work took place start in 1596; the church was brought to finished only in 1628 (although further work took place at the beginning of the 18th century), becoming the seat of the Confraternity of the Dead.
In 1735 the church was embellished with numerous pure gold stuccos. On the facade, marked by the valuable breccia portal, two windows and two niches, the signs of the troubled construction process of the church are evident, based on an original design which then had to be modified in the sense of a more modest completion of the mixtilinear crowning façade . The current facade is probably the fruit of the restorations that already took place between 1694, 1704 and 1705.
Next to the second order window are two stone statues depicting Saint Francis of Assisi and Saint Anthony of Padua, probably older than the church itself. The small bell tower is original, attached transversely to the facade of the building.
Starting from the mid-1938th century, the church also underwent restoration inside, enriched with numerous stuccos in pure gold. In XNUMX the Milanese Natale Penati painted on the ceiling and above the cornices "the Martyrdom of Saint Ursula” and episodes from the life of Saint Anthony of Padua. The main altar is in polychrome marble with four finely sculpted cherubs attributed to an unknown Neapolitan sculptor. Even the side altars, of Sant'Antonio and the Crucifix on one side and of San Biagio and Sant'Orsola on the other, deserve a note for the valuable sculptures that adorn them.
The sixteenth-century organ placed on the carved wooden ambo and the pulpit are valuable. On the choir three canvases: on the left that of the "Holy Bishops” of the Neapolitan school of the 17th century; in the center the canvas of "Purgatorio” by Nunzio De Nunzi (1707); To the right "Madonna and Child, San Gaetano and Souls in Purgatory” of the Neapolitan school (1655). To the left of the entrance a "Deposition” of the Venetian school of the 16th century, in a poor state of conservation.
The church also preserves a treasure consisting of reliquaries, chalices and silver monstrances. Among these there is also a lustral basin in copper embossed with ornamental floral motifs and scenes of the Annunciation, probably from the Flemish school of the 15th century and attributed by some to some Arab craftsman from Lucera (13th century).
The church of Sant'Orsola (also called “Church of Purgatory”) it was built in the 16th-17th century by the will of the priest Don Giovanni Donato Verna who also wanted to add a monastery for nuns. A dispute over ownership, which broke out between the Verna family and others, was resolved with the donation of the church to the Congregation of the Dead on 8 December 1638.
The Congregation purchased many houses around the church, to satisfy Verna's desire, without however managing to build the monastery. The congregation subsequently obtained the title of Archconfraternity, obtaining the royal exequatur in 1769.