La hall was built in 1690 to house a now lost series of very rich objects of the Dominicans and the hearts of Charles of Anjou, Alfonso I and Ferrante.
The hearts were kept in large silver cases that during the French rule, along with many other objects kept in the “Treasure”, were melted, consigning the hearts contained in them to an unknown fate.
The Treasure Room, after the restorations carried out for the Jubilee of 2000, hosts a permanent exhibition of objects, divided into 4 thematic sections, corresponding to four monumental wooden cabinets.
The cabinets, made of walnut, are the work of the cabinetmaker Francesco Antonio Picchiatti (1749). The decoration of the doors is made following the ornamental style of the floor, a splendid example of majolica terracotta, made by the Massa brothers who also made the tiles of the cloister of Santa Chiara.
The sections
The Aragonese chests: in this cabinet, the most extraordinary specimens collected in the Treasure Room are exhibited. At the end of the eighties, the clothes, dated between the 15th and 16th centuries, which were worn by the mummies placed in the burial chests, kept and displayed in the adjacent Sacristy, were removed from the bodies, restored and subsequently exhibited. A snapshot of the history of fourteenth-century costume, reconstructed through damask clothes, silk veils and cushions, sheaths, daggers, coats of arms of the Aragonese family and some members of the court nobility.
The processions: on the northwest wall, intended to house those sacred objects carried in procession during the religious festivals of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, among vases and halos are gathered the statues of the main Dominican saints. The processional busts, exhibited today in the room, reproduce the originals, in silver, which were melted during the French decade and therefore lost.
The Treasure: on the northeast wall of the Room dedicated to the “Treasure” itself, the most precious liturgical apparatuses that the Dominican friars owned are kept: altar frontals, copes in gold and polychrome silks, dalmatics in brocade lampas of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
The sacred furnishings: in this cabinet are exhibited, among other sacred objects, a splendid rock crystal cross and one of the cloths, entirely handmade, donated by the D’Aquino family to the Basilica.
