Chiesa della Visitazione

Chiesa della Visitazione stands as the only surviving church building from a former Visitandine monastery complex. Giovan Battista Ferrante designed the church in 1887. Its nineteenth-century convent architecture preserves marble altars created in 1742 for the monastery church of Santa Chiara. B. A. Vittone designed those marble altars in 1742. The older furnishings connect the later church with an earlier religious setting. Bombing damaged the complex during autumn 1942. The church suffered lighter damage, while the monastery lost roof sections, roof structures, vaults, and a street-side lower building. The convent buildings largely disappeared after the war. Demolition removed the monastery building in 1970, leaving the church as the complex’s sole surviving element.

Today, tall residential buildings surround the church within continuous urban housing. Photographs from 2015 show trees along the edges and the church enclosed by apartment blocks. The church nave remains within the residential streetscape. Its marble altars, wartime history, and surviving structure bring several layers of urban history together.