Chiesa di Santa Maria della Rocca di Casalnuovo Monterotaro

The cult of Santa Maria della Rocca has origins in the medieval village of Mons Rotarus, which was abandoned in the fifteenth century. because of pestilence.

Tradition has it that the church was built by the exiles of the old village of Monterotaro, when they founded the Casale Nuovo. The religious building was actually built in 1656 and named after the Madonna della Rocca as a popular vote to expel the plague; it was completed only in 1732. It stands on a hill on the edge of the district "La Cappella", the name with which the inhabitants of the village usually call the same church.

Today the building has a simple and linear plastered façade, interrupted by a beautiful stone portal and three circular oculi. The bell tower on the side is not the original one, which was demolished in 1967. The interior has a single nave with wooden trussed roof and vaulted apse. Originally there were stuccoes and paintings in the Baroque style; it is characterized by the presence of six chapels, and as many valuable altars of the eighteenth century made with the "scagliola" technique by Vincenzo Ciola and a precious organ of 1746 by Mauro Gallo. The religious building also preserves the late eighteenth century canvas of the Spaniard Diego Pesco Santa Barbara and Santa Lucia and the Statue of the Madonna della Rocca of 1894.