Church of the Wooden Nun, Incurabili Complex

Neapel · Italy · Church

A nun tried to flee the enclosure and stiffened into wood mid-step on the threshold. The church still carries her name today.

The Ospedale degli Incurabili was founded in 1522 on the Caponapoli hill by Maria Lorenza Longo, a noblewoman who, having recovered from illness herself, kept a vow and built a hospital for those nobody else would take. Over time the complex swallowed several convents in the quarter, and one of them left behind a small church everyone in Naples calls la Monaca di Legno, the wooden nun. Legend says a sister who tried to get out of the enclosure stopped mid-step on the threshold and went stiff as a wooden figure, and that she stood there as a warning. Scholars point out that the name also matches the surname of one of the first sisters, but the story is what the neighbourhood kept. In the same complex stands the eighteenth-century pharmacy with its walls of majolica jars.

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Where is Church of the Wooden Nun, Incurabili Complex located?

Church of the Wooden Nun, Incurabili Complex is in Neapel, Italy.

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