Description
The construction of the New Cathedral of San Sebastiano, a Minor Basilica since 1992, has shaped the development of the city center. This imposing building, constructed in 1936 to a design by the engineer F. Barbaro, is the center of Barcelona's main square, crossed by Via Roma. It houses works from the old Cathedral, demolished due to damage in the 1908 earthquake. With a simple, linear layout, the building has a single nave with side chapels, a transept and apse, and an imposing façade in a distinctly neoclassical style.
Inside it contains numerous works of art: among which we remember the large canvas from 1879 depicting the Martyrdom of San Sebastiano, by Giacomo Conti, the Virgin with Child and Saint Francis, signed by Gaspare Camarda and dated 1606, and the canvas with Saint Christopher and stories of his life, a painting attributable to the style of Antonello Riccio. Again, the Triumph of the Cross , Our Lady of the Dying, typical examples of provincial baroque attributable to the workshop of the military painter Filippo Jannelli (1621-1696); a pala d'altare by Cesare Da Napoli, depicting Saints Rocco, Niccolò and Caterina, restored in 2004, and datable to 1580. In the sacristy there are ten quadrilobate oil paintings, without frame, by an unknown artist, depicting the Stories from the life of San Sebastiano, also coming from the old Cathedral, dates back to the 17th-18th century.
In the apse, recently restored, Our Lady of the Rosary, Our Lady of Grace and Saints, Our Lady and Saints Cosmas and Damian, all eighteenth-century works attributable to local painters while at the entrance of the church is placed the marble statue of the Our Lady of Good Rest; finally in the right arm of the transept the processional simulacrum of San Sebastiano, eighteenth-century work.
Among the most recent works we remember: the paintings made in 1984 by Filippo Minolfi, depicting the Christ Pantocrator e The Four Evangelists; the four statues, created in 1986 by the sculptor Tito Amodei, placed in the main façade, and finally the painting made by the painter Gino Colapietro in 1994 depicting The miraculous catch placed on a wall on the left side of the transept.
