Architecture, Territory, Traditions. The Cult of the Madonna del Carmine called “delle Galline” in Pagani

Abstract

Using graphic, photographic, and iconographic documentation, this paper investigates the celebrations of the Madonna del Carmine, “immaterial asset of Italy” according to the Central Institute for Demoetnoanthropology of MIBAC, and their link with the architecture of the town of Pagani, in Southern Italy. The aim is to promote the enhancement and the safeguard of this territory, and its memory consisting of spoken traditions, rituals, worships, festivals, and craftmanship. Intangible assets, as expression of a population’s culture and its identity, are currently at risk in today’s fast moving globalized society which tends to wipe out local identities despite their important role in the configuration of cultural landscapes. Pagani provides us with a valid example of a place where material and immaterial combine together to create a strong link between the town’s architecture and religious cult, local traditions and folkloristic events, that find their maximum representation in the feast of Madonna del Carmine also known as Madonna delle Galline. The painting of the Madonna itself is a replica of an ancient effigy kept underground probably to be saved from iconoclastic destruction, and then randomly found by some hens in a courtyard in the eighteenth century. As memory of this episode, during the festival, the statue of the Madonna, covered with hens and birds, is triumphantly brought in procession around the city, stopping by courtyards of old farmhouses and representative buildings of the town where are the “toselli,” special votive altars set up for the occasion. The paper offers a deep dive into this tradition and its architectures.

1 Introduction

On the basis of the 2003 UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage¹, ratified in Italy with Laws 19/2007 and 167/2007, the Central Institute for Demo-Ethnology promotes initiatives for the protection of the collective identity of the various social groups on the territory and for the expression of cultural diversity, and documents Italian main festivals, listed by regions, through multimedia archives, in order to promote the preservation, and the enhancement of cultural heritage, both material and immaterial.

The institute acknowledges, as intangible asset in Campania, the feast of the Madonna del Carmine, called delle Galline, in the ancient town of Pagani in the agro nocerino-sarnese, developed along the ancient consular road that led from Naples to the Calabrie, passing through Salerno. Pagani, originally linked to the development and the events of nearby Nuceria, in the eighteenth century assumed the name of “Nuceria Paganorum,” when the Knights Pagano obtained the territory in feud. The population, consisting of peasants engaged in the lands of feudal lords, lived in houses gathered around courtyards, where became a practice to live together in solidarity (Istituto Centrale per la Demoetnoantropologia, n.d).

Pagani still preserves, although modified over time, many courtyards where the resident community repeats long-standing daily rituals and hands down ancient traditions. An ancient oral religious tradition, popular in this area, but present with variations throughout the Campania region, links the Madonna delle Galline to other five, or six sisters, worshipped in a deep and heartfelt way in other sanctuaries in the region; these sisters take their name from a distinctive feature or the places they belong to. According to this tradition, we have: the Madonna di Montevergine in the province of Avellino, the Madonna di Piedigrotta, the Madonna dell’Annunziata and the Madonna del Carmine in Naples, the Madonna dell’Arco in Sant’Anastasia, and the Madonna delle Galline in Pagani; added to these six sisters we often find a seventh one, the Madonna della Pace in the town of Giugliano² (Canzanella, 2002; Tardio, 2008) (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1

Worship of the Madonnas sisters in Campania. Location of the Sanctuaries

The Campanian cult of the sisters, whom, depending on the town, can be three, six, but also seven, belongs to popular religiosity, and it is expressed through pilgrimages and festivals. In particular, festivals, that in some cases have very ancient origins, have survived to these days, although partially freed from original meanings and values, showing a consistent and remarkable capacity for continuity and resistance over time (Canzanella, 2002), preserving their vitality also thanks to new or renewed rituals that slowly integrated with the older ones.

This is the case of the feast of the Madonna delle Galline in Pagani, where religious worship combines and merges with local folk traditions, both old and new, while the city with its urban and architectural context act as a backdrop for the celebrations. The analysis of processional itineraries represents a different methodological approach to the study of cities and, along with archive and cartographic data, represents a useful source for historical reconstruction of urban spaces (Guidoni, 1980). Through the planimetric restitution of the religious processional itinerary and the mapping of the toselli, a particular kind of local votive aedicules, within Pagani urban spaces, this study shows how along the established routes we find the most significant elements of the city and its territory, such as churches, courtyards, palaces, open spaces, and squares.

The documentation of the festival in relation to the territory, such as the analysis of religious rites, the mapping of toselli, the reconstruction of the processional itinerary, and the study of folk traditions, allows an analysis of the urban fabric in order to preserve the existing as a testimony of urban values inherited from the past (Colletta, 2002).

2 Origins of the Cult of the Madonna Delle Galline

The cult of the Madonna delle Galline dates back to the early sixteenth century, in the Octave Day of Easter, when, according to the report of the Bishop Ammirante in 1877, some hens scratching in a courtyard of Pagani brought to light a wooden tablet, of the size of two palms by three, on which was depicted the effigy of a Madonna del Carmine³ with dark complexion (Sinatore, 2014). After the finding, the tablet was brought and kept for a long time in the nearby oratory of the Annunziatella, also called Spogliaturo, for in that place the members of that Confraternity, before accompanying the dead to the burial, used change their clothes and wear those prescribed from the rite, now kept in the museum inside the Archconfraternity.

According to well-established traditions, the tablet was brought by monks escaped from the East in the eighth –ninth centuries to subtract the sacred images from the iconoclastic destruction (Matrisciano, 2006), and due to its state of decay, it was necessary to reproduce it on canvas, probably after the image became known in the first years of seventeenth century, when it performed its first miracle, the sudden healing of a cripple, to which followed other seven in a short time. The new canvas, depicting the Madonna with the son in her arms, went to cover the ancient tablet (Vassalluzzo, 1987), embellished by the application of two golden crowns and a golden sunburst around the heads and placed on the high altar of the current Santuario di Santa Maria Incoronata del Carmine detta delle Galline, especially built starting from 1610 next to the Oratory. Only at the end of the eighteenth century, we begin to find news about the presence of the wooden half-bust statue that is carried in procession. The statue depicts a Madonna different from the effigy, both in the pose and in the look, showing a light complexion and auburn hair (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2

From left: Effigy of the Madonna delle Galline; the statue brought in procession; the statue in the niche in the large side chapel during the year, hidden from the view of the faithful by a white cloth

The name Madonna delle Galline seems to have different explanations: According to the local tradition, the name originates from the legendary finding of the effigy, which led to the ancient custom for the population to pay homage to the Madonna during the festival by offering various volatiles, mainly hens, as a memory of the ancient discovery (Villani, 1987); another hypothesis, on the other hand, identifies in this practice the origin of both the name and the cult (Montorio, 1715).

The offer of the hens, which began earlier than the eighteenth century,⁴ has an important value if related to the original agricultural-rural environment of the sanctuary; considering the unfortunate living conditions of the time, the offer of a hen was a great sacrifice for the peasants, as it represented the renunciation of a precious good that guaranteed subsistence (Canzanella, 2002).

2.1 Sanctuary of Santa Maria Incoronata Del Carmine Detta Delle Galline

As mentioned, after the miraculous events, it was decided to build a more worthy church (Fig. 3) to welcome the worshipper, and in 1610, Monsignor Lunadoro, bishop of the Diocese of Nocera, reports that the construction of the church was possible thanks to the generosity of the people, who gave large sums of money for this to be built. In 1615, during his pastoral visit, Monsignor Stefano Vicari already reports an “ecclesia noviter erecta.” In 1665, the prior Mandiello bought some houses located in front of the church in the name of the confraternity and knocked them down to give greater prominence to the façade.

Fig. 3

Drawings of the restoration project finished in 1997, after the damages caused by the 1980 earthquake. Plan, elevation, and sections taken from Arciconfraternita di Santa Maria Incoronata del Carmine detta delle Galline 2000, pp. 46-62. Original drawings 1:100. The table shows the position of the effigy, the statue, and the canopy set up for the feast of the Madonna delle Galline

In 1712, the roof was redone and was embellished with the finest craftmanship wooden coffering (Vassalluzzo, 1987). The twenty-one oil paintings, located in the panels of the wooden coffered that decorates the ceiling of the church, depict some episodes from the life of the Virgin (Fig. 4) (Arciconfraternita di Santa Maria Incoronata del Carmine detta delle Galline, 2000). Of the same year are also six frescoes themed with biblical stories. In 1776, began the construction of the Baroque and Altar, completed with various alterations in 1797, along with the first four-side altars. The remaining two are from the nineteenth century; in the biggest one is a niche with the statue of the Madonna del Carmine (Vassalluzzo, 1987).

Fig. 4

On top left: the organ. Bottom left: the Baroque and Altar. On the right: orthorectified image of the wooden coffer obtained from image-based survey with SLR camera and with the software Photoscan; comparison with the drawings of the restoration project finished in 1997 from Arciconfraternita di Santa Maria Incoronata del Carmine detta delle Galline 2000, p. 62

In August 1786, the chapter of St. Peter in Vatican accepted the plea of the governors of the sanctuary to obtain the coronation of the sacred image of the Madonna delle Galline, which was followed in 1787 by the solemn celebrations so described by canonical theologian Giuseppe Messina in a chronicle of the time: “Si fece un vaghissimo apparato di intorno alla Chiesa e la piazza, sino a settecento palmi di larghezza,⁵ di arazzi, festoni, archi trionfali, cappelle e macchine sontuosissime sulle quali vennero messe alcune iscrizioni da me composte (…). Si rinnovò lo stucco dorato della Chiesa e si aggiunse un’altra mezza chiesa posticcia davanti la porta massima per dar comodo alla gente, ed ai forestieri, che vi sarebbero accorsi, poiché la chiesa non poteva essere capace di in tale occasione. Si fecero vaghe illuminazioni per la città e soprattutto intorno alla macchina superba e tutto col disegno del celebre signor Luigi Cartolano⁶” (Vassalluzzo, 1987, pag. 110). In 1790 was introduced the organ with decorated wooden choir.

3 The Celebrations: Customs and Traditions Between Folklore and Sacredness

Arrangements for the celebrations begin on Monday in Albis, Easter Monday. The church, closed to the public for the following five days, gets adorned with blue, red, and white velvet curtains with golden streaks. A rich canopy surmounted by a great golden crown and covered by the same curtains as the church and is mounted on the side of the altar in order to host the statue of the Madonna, usually located in a niche in the large side chapel during the year, hidden from the view of the faithful by a white cloth (Figs. 2 and 3). Nuns are in charge of changing the white dress of the statue with the red one used for the festival. On Friday in Albis, a huge crowd stands in the small square in front of the church, awaiting the Sanctuary Door Opening Ceremony⁷ (Fig. 5) and the greetings of the tammorrari.⁸ When the doors open, people release doves, which flutter among the crowd during Holy Mass celebration, after which, outside the church, players and dancers start the vigil of the Madonna to the sound of castanets and tammorre.

Fig. 5

From left: Crowd outside the Sanctuary for the door opening ceremony, photo by Gaetano Del Mauro; Man on the stairs reaching out a child to the Madonna http://www.erodoto108.com/sud-e-magia-la-madonna-delle-galline-nella-citta-di-pagani/, March 2019; A woman trows petals from a roof https://biscobreak.altervista.org/2015/04/madonna-delle-galline/, March 2019

On Sunday in Albis, the statue of the Madonna is brought through the streets of the city on a wagon, now motorized. People offer mainly hens, but also ducks, doves, turkeys, peacocks, or moorhens (Ugolini, 1987), along with cakes or tortani,⁹ while men and women reach out their children to the Virgin, in order for her to protect them, and from the balconies hang nuptial and damask blankets and fall flower petals and confetti, recycled from easter eggs paper (Fig. 5).

The air is thick with the smoke of fireworks and roasted artichokes. Along the procession route worshippers create the toselli, votive aedicules embellished with satin covers, lace, and terracotta molds. In some courtyards, where are the toselli, people gather for exhibitions banquets and for dancing the tammurriata. In front of the pontifical basilica of Sant’Alfonso takes place the exchange of gifts: Redemptorist fathers, according to the tradition started by Sant’Alfonso himself, give a couple of hens to the Madonna, receiving back two doves. After the exchange begins the Soolemn Procession, from Sant’Alfonso to the Sanctuary of the Madonna delle Galline. Then, the procession first stops in front of Villa Comunale gardens in order to pay tribute to players and dancers and, after a last stop in Piazza Corpo di Cristo for the mass, ends at the Sanctuary, where people sing the Magnificat. At dawn on Monday, people depose at the feet of the Madonna the tammorre used during the party as sign that the festival is over.

4 The Places of the Celebrations: A Complex and Structured Set of Different Architectural and Urban Subsystems

The analysis of the places of the celebrations starts from the breakdown into different subsystems of the elements composing the festival overall scenario; first analyzed individually and then together in a map that serves as a summary table. Each sub-system is both related to an architectural or urban typology and to a specific action linked to the rituals of the festival. Thus, we find the system of religious buildings with reference to the action of praying; procession route system in relation to movement and city crossing; the Toselli system, for resting, and the courtyards system as extension of city’s open spaces, stages of dances, and conviviality moments, to which the system of noble palaces is the backdrop, as well as historical and non-historical buildings.

4.1 Religious Buildings

The city of Pagani is rich in ancient churches, mostly located along the ancient Roman consular road Popilia, called Corso Regio in the Bourbon period, which, starting from Naples, crossed the agro nocerino-sarnese until in Salerno and the Calabrie. The path of this ancient road corresponds to the current via Carmine, Corso Ettore Padovano, via Marconi, and via San Domenico, along which develops the historic buildings of the city, such as palaces, courtyards and churches of artistic, and architectural interest (Belsito & De Pascale, 2014). Walking this urban axis, starting from East, we find:

• Pontifical Basilica of Sant’Alfonso. The church was committed by Sant’Alfonso de Liguori, who entrusted the project and the direction of the works to the royal architect Pietro Cimafonte. The construction begun in 1756 and was completed only in 1824. In 1908, Pope Piux X elevated the church to a Pontifical basilica.

• Church of Santa Maria della Purità, today Sanctuary of Gesù bambino di Praga. The church was built in 1681 along with the adjacent namesake monastery and stands on the site of an ancient chapel dedicated to the martyr saints Felice and Costanza.

• Church of Santissimo Corpo di Cristo. This church was built in the second half of the sixteenth century, behind the ancient parish church of San Felice, demolished in 1806. Inside is a rich archive.

• Sanctuary of Santa Maria Incoronata del Carmine detta delle Galline. (cfr. 2.1).

• Church of Santissima Addolorata. The church, annexed to Palazzo San Carlo seat of the Town Hall, was built before 1632 and initially dedicated to San Carlo Borromeo. Since 1814, the church is dedicated to the cult of the Santissima Addolorata.

• Church of Madonna del Carmine. It is the last church we find on the Popilia road. Founded in 1491 by Count Francesco Zurlo, it was governed, along with the adjacent convent, by the Discalced Carmelite Fathers.

Other churches scattered in the territory of Pagani are the Church and Conservatory of Carminiello ad Arco in the district called Lamia, as ancient Dea Lamia, Church of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Piazza Cappella, Church of San Francesco da Paola, Church of Madonna di Montevergine, Church of San Sisto, Church and Convent of Sant’Anna, Church of Our Lady of Fatima, and Church of San Domenico di Guzman.

4.2 The Procession Route

In the long-standing tradition,¹⁰ the procession, led by the Confratelli of the ant Arciconfracienternita of Santa Maria Incoronata del Carmine called delle Galline, leaves the sanctuary at nine o’clock in the morning, and in about 14 h covers the 11.98 km² of Pagani territory. It almost appears as the Madonna, covered with hens, pigeons, and a peacock, which perches at her feet,¹¹ is paying a visit to all the inhabitants of Pagani, striking out streets, alleys, and courtyards, reaching also the most remote farms outside the urban center (Fig. 6) (Russo, 2001).

Fig. 6

The processional route is agreed by the authorities, which release it along with religious and secular program. For the creation of this map, we made reference to brochures created by organizers and web material. On the left, map of the procession, cartographic base 1:5000 (Geoportale della provincia di Salerno, n.d), on the right, images of the festival in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries

The procession reaches by one all the districts of the city through an articulated path, constant over the years except for some small necessary variations, and in some points sometimes retraces its steps for better covering the intricate system of streets and alleys of the city. Randomly along the procession route, the virgin receives by worshippers the offers of gallinaceous, which grow in number as the procession advances and are gradually removed.¹² We find a description of this ancient rite in Swinburne’s tales of the journey he made in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies from 1777 to 1780: “They are also attached to a variety of idle superstition, which, however, are daily losing ground. Of these none is more singular than the ceremony of the feast of the Madonna delle Galline: During the procession, hundreds of hens are placed successively on the poles that support her image,¹³ and the miracle consists in the birds sitting quietly. The number of people pressing on every side, and the surrounding noise, make the poor frightened hens remain as still as if perched at roost” (Swinburne, 1790).

Some sources also report that in ancient times “the procession was followed by gigli¹⁴ prepared with large quantities of artichokes and oranges then offered to the Madonna” (Di Nola, 1997), a rite unfortunately disappeared. The analysis of the processional route in relation to the location of religious buildings highlights how this verges on all the city churches. From Piazza Sant’Alfonso, where takes place the ritual of the exchange of gifts, to the Sanctuary of the Madonna delle Galline, begins the solemn procession route, which covers seven hundred meters of the ancient via Popilia with great pomp. In general, we can say the processional routes, like the route of the Madonna delle Galline procession, highlights, through the chosen urban itinerary and the stops along the route, all the urban elements and historical places showing cultural and religious values, considered to be a priority within the urban fabric, and which can be a starting point for further exploration and understanding of the organization of the city, from an urban, social, and cultural point of view (Colletta, 2002).

4.3 Courtyards and Toselli

The courtyards, which still carry the names of the original families who lived in it, are configured as small semi-independent clusters of houses. In the past, families related to, or economically dependent on, the richer family first established in that place, used to live and work together. On the roadside were shops, accessible from the courtyard as well. Other rooms on the ground floor of the court were used as laboratories and warehouses for products or housed the service areas of a noble palace. The houses were located on the upper floors of the buildings, accessible through open staircases and walkways. Agricultural activities took place in the fields and gardens behind. Many of these courtyards had a common wash house and a well for collecting rainwater (Fig. 7).

Fig. 7

On the left: Water well in the Califano courtyard, where the Tosello Madre dell’Africano is set up. On the right: The complexity of the urban space of the courtyard is rendered through a cloud points obtained with photogrammetric survey of the well

Despite the transformations intervening over the last few centuries, Pagani’s courtyards retain many of the original elements, which, as a heritage of a population and its culture, should be documented in order to guarantee their transmission to future generations. The survey of the rich heritage of the city of Pagani through Structure from Motion (SfM) could be the key to its critical documentation aiming at cataloging, renovation activities, or reconstruction in case of loss, way up to virtual usability. A particular feature of the feast of the Madonna delle Galline is the setting up, mostly inside these courtyards, of the so-called toselli, votive aedicules to which people offer the fruits of their land. Toselli, whose name arises from the Spanish word dosel, canopy, originate from an ancient tradition, still in use not long ago according to contemporary witnesses, when inhabitants of the noble palaces and courtyards used to open the great wooden portals, on which they glued votive images of the Madonna, and prepare small receptions for the porters carrying the statue in procession on their shoulders. After the passage of the procession, inhabitants used to close the portals and continued the celebrations in a more private dimension. The tosello in its modern features, drapes of precious damask blankets, altars, small chicken coops. and objects of popular tradition (Fig. 8), set up in a private space, the courtyard, which for the occasion becomes public, spreads thanks to the folk singer Franco Tiano, who first, in 1971, opened his tosello to outsiders, then in 1975 revolutionized the way of setting up the toselli (Sinatore, 2014).

Fig. 8

Miscellanea of toselli from past editions

It is clear that the ancient tradition of toselli evolved thanks to new impulses (Pascariello et al., 2011) and has in fact overturned the concept of public and private, allowing a permeability between the inside and the outside that did not exist in the past, adding a new value to the tradition, for it allows everyone to get to know and experience ancient traditions, which would most likely disappear otherwise and, at the same time, allows the use of an architectural and urban space characterized by precious intangible values. To catalog and map all the toselli has proved to be remarkably complex, mostly for the difficulty to collect fragments of heterogeneous material. The infographic (Fig. 9) offers a reading of the consistency, the trend, and the overall presence of the toselli of the city of Pagani, as well as a classification according to the district.

Fig. 9

Infographic: Toselli of Pagani documented since the 1970s to present time organized by color families based on the area they belong to and according to the order met by the processional route. In yellow the solemn Procession

We were able to create a table providing all the information related to all the toselli documented since the 1970s to present time: name or names, of the toselli through the years; address and correct location on the map; devotees who built it and presence for each year.

4.4 The Ancient Noble Palaces

Pagani historic center is a valuable historical and cultural resource. This urban fabric, extraordinarily rich in exquisitely crafted architectural episodes, is strongly characterized by the presence of numerous noble palaces (Comune di Pagani, 2019). In Pagani and the province of Salerno, the development of this building typology started in 1707 with the end of the Spanish Viceroyalty, when the old nobility and the new aristocracy commissioned new buildings in this area. The noble palace of the city of Pagani is divided into functional areas according to the number of people and main activities: In the courtyard, there are the stables, the carriages, and the access to the cellars below. Upstairs is the noble apartment called quartino, with balconies looking outward. The representative space is the gallery, a large hall richly decorated and furnished, which also houses the family collections. The servants stayed on the top floors or in the attics. The main façade represents the symbol of the aristocracy, as well as the portal, on which the owner carves his family symbol. Among the most representative examples of noble palaces in the city of Pagani we find:

• Tortora degli Scipioni Palace/Tosello Ngopp’o Peron. Located in via Perone was built in the second half of the seventeenth century the Palatine Count Carlo Pignataro, protomedical of the kingdom, who exercised his profession in Pagani. The building develops around a central courtyard, with the entrance slightly shifted to the right and with rectangular modular rooms overlooking the courtyard, separated by the rear garden by a rectangular building.

• Tortora Palace/Tosello Palazzo Tortora. The palace, in via Marconi, is the only example left in Pagani with the original fresco paintings that used to embellish Pagani noble palaces. The building is currently inhabited by various owners, but the dove painted on the three hills under the vault of the hallway confirms the connection to noble Tortora family.

• San Carlo Palace. It is located in Piazza D’Arezzo and is currently the Town Hall. It was built as a convent and college of the fathers of the Pious Schools and was later used in part as the seat of the Royal Giudicato and partly a prison. It preserves the façade and the internal staircase in Vanvitellian style.

• Gatto Palace/Tosello Istituzionale Palazzo Gatto. The building, located in Piazza Corpo di Cristo, opposite to the church by the same name, was the seat of the Regiment House or Municipality of Nuceria Pagonorum, as attested by the inscription on the keystone of the portal. An integral part of the building is the votive aedicula dedicated to the Madonna delle Galline.

• Mangarella Palace/Tosello ro’ Manganella. The building, located in Via Astarita, still retains the name of the ancient and noble family of Manganella, now extinct, who had it built between the XVII and eighteenth centuries. Tradition wants the building to be in communication with the Castello di Cortimpiano, a very old area in Pagani, and the Castello del Parco in Nocera Inferiore. The building, although in a poor state of preservation, still retains the architectural features of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries almost completely intact and presents some elements of great formal refinement especially in the staircase.

Other palaces are: Pagano Palace, Striano Palace, Palazzo Criscuolo Palace, Coscioni Califano Palace, and Fusco Palace, today the seat of the Congregazione delle Suore del Preziosissimo Sangue and of the Tosello Religioso Tommaso Maria Fusco.

5 Conclusions

Documenting the feast of the Madonna delle Galline also means to represent a city, Pagani, which during the days of the festival transforms thanks to peculiar and ephemeral setups connected to religious worship and thanks to numerous folkloristic moments of the festival itself; the city opens up to citizens and to all those came to worship the Madonna and celebrate with songs, dances, music, and food. Many private places, such as the courtyards of noble palaces as well as those of historical and non-historical buildings, where the toselli are set up, become accessible to the public, turning into rest areas where it is possible to carry out religious rites or sharing moments of conviviality. The open spaces of the city, such as streets, alleys, squares, gardens, on this occasion of the feast, almost appear as internal environments in which the community is collegially involved in an intimate religious recollection and strongly connected from an emotional point of view.

Although we find evidence of this festival as ancient cult in various bibliographical sources, the main instrument for its documentation remains photography, that portrays the festival in all its aspects, allowing a proper monitoring over time. The feast of the Madonnas delle Galline is widely documented, in fact, by a rich photo collection, also available on the web, of which we propose some in the contribution, portraying the main phases of the festival: The Door Opening Ceremony outside the sanctuary where is the nineteenth-century statue of the virgin, the procession that crosses the main streets, the alleys, the courtyards with the Alzata del Quadro, the raising of the picture representing the effigy of the Madonna, the tammurriata, the return to the sanctuary of the Madonna with the deposition of the tamorre. On the web, it is also possible to watch some interesting videos, including the docufilm “L’Africano,” a tribute to the figure of Franco Tiano, presented at the 48th edition of the Giffoni Film Festival in 2018, allowing the people, even those who have never been there, to live the unique atmosphere created the week immediately after Easter in this town of agro nocerino-sarnese.

This paper aims at fixing the image and the story of the feast with a graphic representation; that is, through a cartographic map on which it is possible to overlap the festival and the city identifying the places involved by the procession, the cult, the folklore and food, and wine events (Fig. 10).

Fig. 10

Cartographic map with the identification of the subsystems previously examined

In fact, it is the sign to be considered the main instrument for expressing identity, tradition, culture, even of intangible assets, so that these can be kept in the collective memory. It was, therefore, necessary to deny for a moment the immateriality of the festival, in order to highlight the urban paths of the procession to get to know the sites related to the cult of the Madonna delle Galline. The historical center of Pagani is the area of the city interested by the solemn rituality of the festival, the area where are concentrated the main noble palaces, some of which also host workshops or photographic exhibitions that testifies the willingness of the local population to spread a tradition rich in references to the territory of the agro nocerino.

The mapping of the toselli shows a greater concentration in the historical center, mainly in the area around the Sanctuary of the Madonna delle Galline, area in which the devotion to the Madonna is more strongly manifested, almost reinforcing the presence of the Madonna in the church where the effigy and the statue are kept. As for many popular festivals with religious origin, the feast of the Madonna delle Galline in Pagani is also closely linked to food and wine traditions, manifesting through both public and private banquets with local wines and products of the land wisely cooked respecting ancient traditions. It is to be hoped that the dissemination of this festival will be more favored by local and national institutions for the safeguarding of intangible urban values and intangible assets and for a sustainable development of the territory both for increasing tourism and spreading historical and cultural knowledge.