Chiesa Madre San Giorgio
 
Symbol of the spirituality of the city, the Cathedral Church was built between 1790 and 1825 on the remains of two previous churches, and consecrated three years later.

 

The building is divided into a Greek cross plan, with an extension of the presbytery apse. The façade, of neo-sixteenth-century taste, has in the tympanum a relief of Saint George with the dragon and, at the bottom of the corners, two statues of Saints Peter and Paul, carved by an unknown local artist of the late '700 on models of clay provided by a Milanese sculptor. On the pilasters of the right canton, at the corner with Via Porta Nuova, there are two small engraved crosses, to the laying of the first stone in 19 July 1790 and the relics of San Vittorio and San Ruffino. At the four corners of the first order of the bell tower (47.5 meters high) there are also four stone statues of female figures identified with three Marie and Veronica, dating back to the dismemberment of the polyptych of the Pietà present in the previous Mother Church. The central dome, 35 m high, has a flattened profile and was once covered with colored tiles of glazed terracotta creating a strong color contrast with the rest of the building, but were damaged by lightning in 1841 and were not restored.

 

The interior is characterized by a certain neoclassical architectural sobriety along with a Renaissance and Baroque figurative equipment from the previous church. The Baroque altar, a marble altar clerks was made in 1764 in the workshop of Lamberti in Naples. On the sides of it are a seventeenth-century fresco depicting San Donato, and on the right a seventeenth-century canvas depicting the Risen Christ. Next to it is the altar of the Assumption, decorated with a painting by Gennaro Maldarelli dating back to 1838. On the sides of the main entrance there are two niches, one of which houses the polychrome marble baptistery and the other a marble monument to Vitantonio Montanaro, founder of the new church.

Entering, along the left wall opens the SS. Sacramento, where there are two pairs of parasites, with carved on them, in 42 panels, scenes of the Old and New Testaments, from the previous church. On the wall of the apse there is a Last Supper of 1841, by Gennaro Maldarelli, which produced an almost identical one in the Matrice Church of Mottola.  The main altar is in polychrome marble, also by Caggiano of 1861, with a large painting of San Giorgio, at the end of the apse, of 1841, by Maldarelli. The presbytery was modified in the 70s of the 20th century and houses a wooden statue of Saint George in one side niche and in the other a series of ancient reliquaries. At various points of the church, on the upper walls, there are 13 paintings by Onofrio Bramante.  Entering the sacristy, above the door are placed two seventeenth-century wooden busts depicting San Vittorio and San Ruffino. In the room on the left there are three paintings dating back to the late '600 and early '700 that depict the Martyrdom of Saint Bartholomew, the disbelief of Saint Thomas and a flagellated Christ. In the niche there is a baroque marble sink from the previous church and next to the access to the Soccorpo staircase is the altar of San Michele, dating from around 1819, with a painting of the Fall of the Angels of 1839, also by Maldarelli. Inside the crypt follows the altar of SS. Rosario of 1764, with in the center a large canvas of the Madonna del SS. Rosario, surrounded by a large marble frame in the wall, next to Santa Caterina da Siena, San Domenico and 15 ovals of 1769 depicting the Mysteries by the Martinese painter Francesco De Mauro. In the crypt there are also minor statues, including one depicting the Assumption of the Virgin.