Or on holiday in Tropea in Calabria, tourists can not visit this rock, now the tourist icon of Calabria in Italy and worldwide. Certainly the church that stands on the rock has medieval origins. According to the local reporter Francis Sergio there existed a community Basilian named Menna.
Monasticism, as reported by Don Francesco Pugliese in his book a rock and a church was already very near Tropea, maybe this big rock, once even larger and surrounded by the sea, has attracted the contemplative spirit in search of solitude . Church St. Maria de Tropea, cum omnibus suis pertinentiis appeared on the list of dependencies of Benedictine Abbey "written on the bronze door panels (merged, inter alia, to Constantinople) to the Committee of the abbot of Montecassino Desiderius (later Pope Victor III).
Respecting the various pontifical documents examined, the Pugliese notes so that if the church appeared in tiles already in the eleventh century, then had to be of major importance, control substantial assets and, therefore, exist for a long time ago. The architectural alterations, already suffered from the building in humanistic age, still leave a glimpse of early medieval Byzantine character, sources confirm that due to the small monastic community Basilian. This presence, coupled with greek ritual, slowly but surely began to fade after other indigenous began to come under the ownership of Montecassino Benedictine (such as a small church near the present Calvary donated by a certain Bernard, or a property named Tuna and the nearby Bordila Parghelia). This step was facilitated, according to Pugliese, the "Dukes Sichelgaita Norman and his son Roger Borsa, just as the diocese was suppressed Amantea to be sucked in to Tropea. The "cell" on this rock at the time of the Basilian monks of greek rite was the seat of worship of a Madonna who went to the monks Montecassino. The legend associated with this wooden madonna is similar to other sanctuaries in southern Italy (see the section Myths and Legends). The stairway to the church was built by digging into the rock of the steps, and completed in the nineteenth century. Before the current system, the steps, still incomplete, was accessible via a ramp to coincide with the shrine dedicated to the place where he was raised for the first time the wooden statue of the Madonna. Near this ramp had been dug a cave church dedicated to St. Leonardo, together with other small caves dug by local seamen became warehouses where they guarded the fishing gear. Inside the church were bought by Pugliese of medieval tombs: one in the center of the church attached to the master of Miletus, one of which there remains the gravestone, with a figure carved in relief on the Ecce Homo and two female figures; third, Byzantine, there are only fragments.
Various alterations suffered by the church over the centuries radically transformed, and it is hard to see almost inside his two souls: an atypical early medieval building extraction Byzantine basilica and a centrally planned Western trinavata with Polastri and barrel vault , expression of master of architecture, creation of simple but tasty local workers "(F. Pugliese).
The latest alterations are due to the recent earthquake of 1783, construction of the scale before 1810 and the earthquake of 1905. Even today the ancient wooden statue of the Madonna that remains is a memory not know in fact the representations of the medieval St. Mary's Praesepe. The statue of the Madonna eighteenth century onwards, part of the group kept in the Holy Family church was also remodeled in the fifties of the twentieth century.
(Source: ProLoco Tropea)
Related articles:
- On holiday in Tropea, among the 20 most beautiful beaches in Europe
- The port of Tropea
- On holiday in Tropea, among the 20 most beautiful beaches in Europe
