The Basilica of the Santissima Annunziata Maggiore is a church in Naples

Naples

Naples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples...

 in southern Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

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The Annunziatas origins goes back to 1320 and has always been, in one form or another, an orphanage

Orphanage

An orphanage is a residential institution devoted to the care of orphans – children whose parents are deceased or otherwise unable or unwilling to care for them...

. Remade a first time in the early 16th century, by the mid 17th century, it was a full-fledged home, church, hospital, and school for such children. In the 1750s, under Charles III

Charles III of Spain

Charles III was the King of Spain and the Spanish Indies from 1759 to 1788. He was the eldest son of Philip V of Spain and his second wife, the Princess Elisabeth Farnese...

, the entire premises were remodeled by a team of architects that included Ferdinando Fuga

Ferdinando Fuga

Ferdinando Fuga was an Italian architect, whose main works were realized in Rome and Naples in the Baroque style.-Biography:Born in Florence, he began to work in that city as a pupil of Giovanni Battista Foggini. In 1717 he moved to Rome, to continue his apprentice studies...

, who also built the giant Royal Hospice for the Poor, and Luigi Vanvitelli

Luigi Vanvitelli

Luigi Vanvitelli was an Italian engineer and architect. The most prominent 18th-century architect of Italy, he practiced a sober classicizing academic Late Baroque style that made an easy transition to Neoclassicism.-Biography:Vanvitelli was born at Naples, the son of a Dutch painter of land and...

. The façade of the church is by Vanvitelli, as is the dome. The gray and white interior is a sober statement of "anti-Baroque", with a theme of coupled Corinthian columns under an unbroken entablature; paired ribs carry the columns upwards in skeletal semi-circular arches that articulate the coffered barrel vaulting. There are works by Giuseppe Sanmartino

Giuseppe Sanmartino

Giuseppe Sanmartino or Giuseppe Sammartino was an Italian sculptor during the Rococo period.Sanmartino was born in Naples. His first dated work is The Veiled Christ or Christ lying under the Shroud, commissioned initially from the Venetian sculptor Antonio Corradini who did not live to complete...

, the sculptor of the famed Veiled Christ in the Sansevero Chapel.
The church plays an important role in the lore of the city of Naples. As an orphanage, it was a famous "drop-off" point for abandoned infants, who were placed into a revolving basket container from the street outside the walls of the church on the street. The basket could then be turned such that infant wound up within the church where nuns would then receive and register the new addition to the orphanage. (The "basket room" has been restored and visitors may see how the operation was handled.) The church functioned as an orphanage until the 1950s at which time state social services took over the task.

The Santissima Annunziata is also the burial place for Giovanni Villani

Giovanni Villani

Giovanni Villani was an Italian banker, official, diplomat and chronicler from Florence who wrote the Nuova Cronica on the history of Florence. He was a leading statesman of Florence but later gained an unsavory reputation and served time in prison as a result of the bankruptcy of a trading and...

 (1276–1348), the first great historical chronicler of Florence who died of the Black Death

Black Death

The Black Death was one of the most devastating pandemics in human history, peaking in Europe between 1348 and 1350. Of several competing theories, the dominant explanation for the Black Death is the plague theory, which attributes the outbreak to the bacterium Yersinia pestis. Thought to have...

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