Our History

The Hotel San Francesco al Monte is the result of a project to rehabilitate and convert the left wing of the ancient monastery of Santa Lucia al Monte directed by the architect Luciano Raffin. The monastery’s dates from the 16th and began with the first single cell that Friar Augustine Miglionico of the Order of Friars Minor Conventual, also known as the “Barbanti” for their flowing beards, carved in the side of the hill of San Martino, in an isolated area known as the mountain. Over time, the first cell became the Church of Saint Lucia Vergine e Martire, and a more extensive and organised religious complex grew alonside it on the side of the hill.

The project to adapt the ancient monastery, skillfully preserved fascinating and artistically important areas such as the Chapel of San Giovan Giuseppe della Croce, patron saint of Ischia, the Hall of the Oven and the frescoed Refectory. You can see fragments of frescoes, ancient majolica and decorations in every corner of the hotel.

The third floor also houses the cell where Giovan Giuseppe della Croce spent the last 12 years of his life. Remembered for the miracle of the apricots that grew around him even during the winter, he was beatified in 1789. That same year, his cell was turned into a votive chapel and, today, it is one of the most enchanting areas of the entire hotel.

With the aim of promoting accessibility to contemporary artistic culture, a selection of works by the Morra Foundation was set up at the Hotel San Francesco al Monte, a prestigious hotel located at the foot of the Vigna San Martino. The exhibition extends from the hall to the third floor of the hotel and includes works by national and international artists who experimented with the most radical forms of art in the second half of the twentieth century. Among the artists included are Arman, Nanni Balestrini, Hermann Nitsch, Luca Maria Patella, Vettor Pisani, Paul Renner, Shozo Shimamoto and Neapolitan artists such as Renato Barisani, Carmine Di Ruggiero, Augusto Perez Gianni Pisani, Errico Ruotolo and Domenico Spinosa. Furthermore, a section of the exhibition contains a gallery of portraits representing some of the personalities from the imaginary world created and narrated by Maurizio Elettrico in "The New Empire" and "The Squirrel and the Grail".

The Morra Foundation was established in 1992 with the aim of promoting, organizing and spreading the culture of communications. In 2008, as part of a larger urban regeneration project called the Art Quarter, the Hermann Nitsch Museum Archive Laboratory for Contemporary Arts was opened, marking the first step towards integrating the Foundation into the community of the Avvocata neighborhood. This process continued in 2016 with the inauguration of Casa Morra, a contemporary art archive housed in Palazzo Cassano Ayerbo D'Aragona. Casa Morra was conceived as a space to plan one hundred years of exhibitions and is also the place where the daily study, conservation and communication activities of the Foundation's archives are conducted, recognized as being of historical interest by the Archival and Bibliographic Superintendence of Campania. In synergy with the two museum spaces, the Shozo Shimamoto Association, based in the eighteenth-century Palazzo Spinelli di Tarsia, contributes to the vitality of the Art District.