Welcome to the site Napoliforme

It dates back to the 14th century, but was rebuilt and restored several times until 1853. Since the Middle Ages, the wooden statue of the Madonna di Piedigrotta (1320-30) on the high altar has been the centrepiece of a popular festival (celebrated on 8 September) and the origin of the fable of the first maiden to lose a slipper. The Madonna, who dwells in a grotto, often goes away at night invoked by sailors in difficulty and, in order to return before dawn, hurries to the beach of Mergellina; but one night she loses the slipper that she had taken off to remove the sand. One night, however, he lost the slipper, which he had taken off to remove the sand. The next morning, a fisherman found the slipper and in the grotto nearby, he discovered the statue, without a slipper and with its coat still wet. The tradition of giving brides a slipper ('o scarpunciello d'a Maronna) as a good omen began in the Middle Ages, and young people and women in labour paid homage to the Madonna of Piedigrotta in the same way as they went to the Crypta Neapolitana, a propitiatory place dedicated to the god of fertility in the imperial age. Giambattista Basile's tale La gatta Cenerentola (1634-36), later revised by Charles Perrault for the fairy tale Cinderella (1697), derives from the legend. The festival of Piedigrotta is one of the city's ancient festivals, suspended between the sacred and the profane, and since the 19th century the event has been intertwined with the history of Neapolitan music and song: the first successful piece of music is Te voglio bene assaje (1839), Piedigrotta's official anthem. Since 2007, after a brief period of abandonment, celebrations, parades, music, art and fireworks have returned to animate the Mergellina promenade in the first week of September.