Page 14 - SAINT HADRIAN’S CHURCH

Adriano Mazziotti

On top of the central arch it is placed the picture of “Our
Lady of Good Counsel”, maybe a gift of the first Albanian
refugees to the abbey for the
hospitality offered by the abbot
once they arrived here in 1471.
Above the central altar, in two
niches, there are the wooden
busts of St. Hadrian and St.
Natalia, made between the end
of 1600 or in the early 1700.
They both have an oval crystal embedded on the chest
containing a relic and a votive.

THE FLOOR

Defined for its beautiful polychrome "a large oriental rug”
by the archaeologist Paolo Orsi, the floor of the church once
stretched as far as the beginning of the Byzantine
iconostasis. The surface is made of "opus sectile", that is
minute stone elements skillfully cut and stuck, and marble
slabs in different shapes and colours, probably built in the
late 12th or in the early 13th century, one century after the
monastery had known the influence of the Latin abbey of
Cava dei Tirreni.
The floor, which has undergone quite a few losses of its
original material both because of the wear and of the

several reconstructions, still preserves four treasures: the
mosaics, whose construction dates back to Norman times
or late Middle Ages.
It is four marble slabs depicting inlaid animals of symbolic

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