In Argento street there is the Church of St. Maria del Suffragio, best -known as the Church of Purgatorio. Dated back to the early of the eighteenth century, it has a wooden door on which a geometrical and figurative representation of the Triumph of Death is carved on.
In a figurative sense, the wooden boards of the door represent on the top, the symbols of the power; at the bottom, many work tools. According to the saying that the death make us all equal, it is represented in the middle of the door, by two skeletons. One skeleton is the mirror of the other, and they hazard about which of them, during their lifetime, had a crown of a king, a mitre of a cardinal or on the other hand, which of them bore the burden of hoe's farmer, or the burden of the poverty.

The Latin cross plane church has five altars. The main baroque altar is made with pietra leccese (a special kind of limestone of the area of Lecce). In the small garden of the sacristy a staircase leads to a crypt and to an underground burial of the church where Confraternity members and their close relatives were buried. On the inside, in many reliquaries, many skeletons of Confraternity members who died between the XVIIIth and XIXth century, are preserved.
The painting of Madonna del Carmine, made by the neapolitan artist Paolo De Matteis, is preserved on the main altar.

http://www.comune.monopoli.ba.it/ViverelaCittagrave/Learee/ArteeCultura/Cripteechiese/Chieseincittagrave/SMariadelSuffragio/tabid/709/language/it-IT/Default.aspx

¹ Giacomo Campanelli, Monopoli guida turistica, Schena editore 1989
² Francesco Lillo, Monopoli “Nel cuore della Puglia”.