The Samaritan’s well

The chapel is designed as an open loggia that surrounds a central canopy structure with a ribbed vault supported by columns, under which the Samaritan’s well is located. Restored in 1999, it currently contains a two-dimensional reproduction of the terracotta relief sculpture depicting Jesus and the Samaritan woman, which was originally located here. As Father Faustino Ghilardi recounts in his Guide to the Sanctuary of San Vivaldo (1936), the fumes released during the cooking of the lye used by the friars to wash clothes in the sinks behind the well – still visible today – seriously damaged the valuable terracotta pieces, which were sold in 1912 to restore other chapels and are now conserved in the United States, at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Built shortly after the structures that made up the original project, this is one of the two sixteenth-century chapels, along with the House of Simon the Pharisee, that are dedicated to episodes in the life of Christ that are not directly linked to the Passion.