The Palazzo was built in the second half of the 1500s at the behest of Paolo di Sangro. The simple facade was embellished in 1621 and is the one we see today. Over the ornate portals is the crest of the Sangro di Severo family. In 1590, prince Carlo Gesualdo, famous composer of madrigals, killed his wife, Maria d Avalos, and her young lover, don Fabrizio Carafa. They say that Gesualdo then killed his own tiny son because of a resemblance, real or imagined, to his wife s lover.
Tradition says that the ghost of the murdered wife still walks the halls of the building.
It dates back to 1590 when the Sansevero family had a private chapel built in what were then the gardens of the nearby family residence, the Palazzo Sansevero. Definitive form was given to the chapel by Raimondo di Sangro, famous Prince of Sansevero, whose patronage added the frescos and sculpture which would turn the chapel into a harmonious and integral manifestation of religious faith of the eighteenth century. Unique and world famous, of course, is the statue of the Veiled Christ, sculpted by Giuseppe Sanmartino in 1753.