On the Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord we remember the moment in which the angel of the Lord made the announcement to Mary in the city of Nazareth.

Nine months before the Birth of the Lord, the solemnity of the Annunciation celebrates the mysterious meeting between God and man in the womb of a woman. Mary, “closed garden”, “sealed fountain” (Song of Songs 4.12), welcomes the word of God and allows herself to be fertilized by the Spirit who casts his shadow over her, the new Tent of encounter (cf. Luke 1, 35; Ex 40, 34-35), weaving in her womb the humanity of Christ, the New Man, Son of God and Son of man. Through Mary’s “here I am” (Lk 1, 38) the fiat of the Son of God is composed who, entering the world, says: “a body has prepared me […]. Then I said: “Behold, I come – since it is written about me in the title of the book – to do your will, O God”. (Heb 10, 5.7).

In the first centuries, the feast of the Annunciation remained part of the Christmas cycle; only from the 7th century did it give rise to a specific liturgical celebration.

When the Solemnity falls in Holy Week like this year, it moves to the Monday after the Second Sunday of Easter.

The Church of SS Annunziata in Padula is dedicated to the Annunciation of the Lord. The church has a monumental exterior with a double flight of stairs. The facade is divided into two orders, surmounted by a triangular tympanum, and a stone portal which reveals the baroque art of the Certosa di San Lorenzo and the docility of the Padula stone.

The plan is rectangular with a single nave with a polygonal apse. The interior houses in the door of the tabernacle the galvanic copy of the masterpiece by Andrea Cariello from Padua, “Christ breaking the Eucharistic bread”, as well as some restored canvases and panels also coming from other chapels and churches in the parish of San Giovanni Battista.

Edicola SS Annunziata. Lato destro Chiesa SS Annunziata Padula

Probably built before the 17th century, the church also had a hospital and an orphanage (hospice for orphaned children) on the north side, which the earthquake of 16 December 1857 and the construction of the carriage road destroyed.

Outside the Church, the round arch in local stone with large ashlars and the civic coat of arms in the keystone stands out, which the Padulese deputy Giovanni Camera (1862-1929) raised in 1911 to a National Monument. In fact, it frames the Sacrario dei Trecento by Carlo Pisacane from 1857 (but remodeled in 1957) whose remains are kept in display cases visible to the public.

The altar houses the triptych “Padula is Jerusalem”, discover all the details of the work in our in-depth analysis.