Chiesa di San Nicola di Orsara di Puglia

The first religious building present in this place was before the thirteenth century and increased in importance in 1590, when it became a parish seat. In the seventeenth century it was enlarged and transformed into a Baroque church with a Latin cross, whose transept consists of the nave of the pre-existing factory. In the same period the beautiful bell tower. As evidence of the original layout on the left side of the church it is possible to identify what was the original entrance, today walled. The transformation and expansion of the building caused the reduction of the square in front, with the curious incorporation in the facade of the so-called preta tonna: a stone cylinder that was the fulcrum of the square and that was used both for the execution of capital punishment and for the raising of the tree of freedom after the French Revolution. The facade of the building is covered in white marble and is simple as the interior and with a single nave, punctuated by large arched niches containing frescoes of this century with a biblical theme.

Among the jewels kept here are a polychrome marble altar of the Neapolitan school of 1777 and a beautiful baptismal font of '600, the beautiful wooden statue of San Michele (from October to April) and the Stone Cross of Crepacore. The latter is a sublime work of sculpture that anticipates the Renaissance styles and traditionally comes from the disappeared castrum of Crepacore. Probable work of Giovanni da Casalbore represents the Crucifixion with the Madonna and Saint John the Apostle on one side and the Madonna enthroned with the child Jesus with a fragment of coral on the other side.