Complesso museale Santa Maria delle Anime del Purgatorio ad Arco

The complex, which includes the church, the Opera Museum and the Hypogeum, is an extraordinary opportunity to learn about the ancient cult of the souls in purgatory.

In 1605 a group of nobles founded the Opera Pia, a lay congregation whose main purpose was to "cure" the souls in Purgatory: thus the elegant church was built, to a design by Giovan Cola di Franco, conceived from the outset on two levels: the upper church, a true masterpiece of Neapolitan Baroque art, and the lower church or hypogeum, still the seat of the cult of the "pezzentelle souls".

The iconography of the church is of great value: On the high altar there is a masterpiece by Massimo Stanzione, the Madonna of the Purgatorial Souls, surmounted by Giacomo Farelli's painting of Saint Anne offering the Child to the Eternal Father, and in the side chapels there is the Transit of Saint Joseph by Andrea Vaccaro and the Death or Ecstasy of Saint Alexis, The complex also houses a small but valuable Museo dell'Opera, which houses a collection of paintings and artefacts dating from the 17th to the 19th centuries, the Historical Archive and a medical clinic for the poor.