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The church of the Blessed Virgin Mary
The Mother Church of Tricase is dedicated to the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, a sign of the long and deep devotion of the tricasini to the Heavenly Mother.
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Built on the site of the other parish precedents, the main church of Tricase is dedicated to the cult of the Nativity of Mary.
The present temple building began in 1736, when in a public parliament the tricasini decided to enlarge the previous structure because it was too small for the increased number of the population. To find the necessary financial resources for the factory, the Civic University of Tricase instituted the “vigesima” tax on wheat, barley and olives, and the provision of working days for citizens exempt from taxation.
Having decided on the enlargement of the temple, the Dominican Fathers of Tricase suggested to the superintendents of the Fabbrica, the figure of the Dominican friar Tommaso Manieri da Nardò. Beginning the work of the church, a little later the same ones were suspended because they were going to alter the stability of the structure. The University of Tricase, in order to have a truthful report on the state of the church that was now uncovered and unsafe, asked the man who was considered the most experienced and brilliant architect of the Province of Terra d’Otranto, Mauro Manieri. He stated that the drawing prepared by Fra Tommaso could not have been followed.
After almost twenty years, the Superintendency of the Tricase Matrix Factory decided to entrust the execution of the operations from the plan of a new church to the excellent architect Adriano Preite da Copertino (1724-1804). Work resumed in 1763 and continued until 1781. For the construction of the present building the buildings of the hospital, the civil prison and part of the clock tower were demolished, the temple was solemnly opened for worship on 24 July 1784 Today the tricasina matrix appears incomplete of the tympanum in the façade and of the orders of the bell tower.
With a Latin cross plan and a very deep apse, the parish church of Tricase is the largest church in the city. The façade with two orders, is refined by the portal in Lecce stone, with a pair of columns that support a niche with the statue of the Virgin. Inside, abundantly illuminated by "lyre" windows, thirteen altars are placed, six in the central nave and seven in the cruise, including the high altar. The vault is finely decorated with stuccos made in 1784 by the stucco decorator of the team of the Preite, the Italian Luigi Rossi. In the same year the balustrade sculpted in Lecce stone by the alessano Emanuele Orfano, completed by it in 1787 with the carving of the wooden gate, dates back to the same year. In 1784 the organ was restored with the funds of the Civic University, while in 1795 the temple was enriched by the wooden pulpit, finely inlaid in walnut by the master cabinetmaker Raffaele Monteanni da Lequile; the wooden statue of San Vito Martire, protector of the city, donated to the parish by Vincenzo Pisanelli dates back to 1793 instead.
The church preserves the furnishings and furnishings of the previous temples such as the Renaissance baptismal font (1547) and many of the paintings and altarpieces. The works of maximum pictorial value are concentrated in the transept, where the noble altars of the Gallons, Principles of Tricase, are located. In the left transept, a monumental altar machine houses the sixteenth-century painting of the Virgin and Child with Saints Matthew and Francesco da Paola and the clients Stefano and Alessandro Gallone (1581), attributed to the brush by Paolo Caliari, known as the Veronese; while the altar on the opposite side is embellished by the seventeenth-century canvas by Gian Domenico Catalano depicting St. Charles Borromeo (1616).
On the sides of the main altar there are the altarpieces of the Deposition from the Cross (1614) on the left, and of the Immaculate Conception (1612) on the right, autograph works by Jacopo Palma il Giovane. In the apse there is the panel of the Vergine del Foggiaro (XVI), a sixteenth-century work from the previous matrices, the canvas depicting the Baptism of San Giovanni (end XVI), attributed to Fasolo, a disciple of the Veronese, and the canvas of the Virgin in glory among the Saints (1640ca.) by Paolo Fenoglio.
