Santa Sofia, Benevento

Santa Sofia is a church in Benevento, southern Italy, one of the main surviving examples of Lombard architecture.

In 2011, it became a UNESCO World Heritage Site as part of a group of seven inscribed as Longobards in Italy. Places of the power (568-774 A.D.).

The church was founded by the Lombard Arechis II of Benevento around 760, as testified by numerous privileges signed by him, some of which are in the Museum of Samnium near the church. The edifice was modeled on the Palatine Chapel of the Lombard king Liutprand in Pavia and, after the defeat of Desiderius by Charlemagne and the fall of the Lombard kingdom in northern Italy (774), it became the national church of the Lombards who had taken shelter in the Duchy of Benevento. The church was part of a large program of construction which would legitimate Arechis' claim as the highest Lombard authority, after his failed attempt to acquire the title of king and the renaming of the duchy as a principality.

Arechis dedicated it to St. Sophia, like the Hagia Sophia basilica in Constantinople; he also annexed a Benedictine female convent, depending from the Abbey of Montecassino and led by his sister Gariperga. The sanctuary would also house the relics of Saint Mercurius abandoned in 633 near Quintodecimo by the eastern Roman emperor Constans II.

The church was severely damaged by earthquakes in 1688 and 1702, which caused the original dome and some later medieval additions. Cardinal Orsini, the future Pope Benedict XIII, had the church rebuilt in Baroque style. The restoration work, started in 1705, transformed the plan from a stellar to a circular one, added two side chapels, and changed the appearance of the apse, of the façade and of the pillars. Further, the frescoes which decorated the interior were mostly destroyed: today only a few fragments, depicting the Stories of Christ and Mary, remain.

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