The Church of San Giovanni a Carbonara is an ancient fourteenth-century church in Naples, and has one of the richest collections of works of art among all the churches in the city. The church is located going up Via Carbonara, so called because in medieval times there was deposited the carbonarium of urban waste.
The church has no facade, but with a majestic double staircase, was built between 1343 and 1418 by Gualtiero Galeoto, dedicated to St. John the Baptist.
The interior has a single rectangular nave with side chapels, has a square apse, on which there is the Funeral Monument of King Ladislaus of Durres, and a large circular chapel with the Sepulchre of Sergianni Caracciolo. At the beginning of the eighteenth century Ferdinando Sanfelice took care of the arrangement of the underlying Church of Santa Maria Consolatrice degli Afflitti and the entrance staircase, and after the restoration by Federico Travaglini in 1856 another one was needed to repair the church after the damage suffered by the Second World War. The main element of the church is the imposing and extraordinary funeral monument of King Ladislao di Durazzo, erected at the behest of his sister Giovanna II in 1428, on which Andrea da Firenze and Leonardo da Besozzo worked. Inside the church we find the Caracciolo del Sole Chapel erected by Sergianni Caracciolo and frescoed together by Lonardo da Besozzo and Perrinetto da Benevento with frescoes depicting Stories from the Life of the Virgin and Hermit Stories.
