That's what I like

One of my favorite things, right up there with medical museums, is the horror and gore of an old-fashioned Catholic church. Which puts Italy's churches almost on a par with Italy's food among my reasons for really loving this country. Churches here have an over-the-top exuberance that makes Liberace look like a Swedish modernist, and great art, outsider art, and medical illustration are all entwined with each other.

The other day we drove over to Galatina, a little town near here, one of the country's zillions of adorable little burgs with a medieval center that makes you reach for your camera. Even if you're not a very adept photographer.

We stopped in at the Basilica di Santa Caterina to have a look. It turns out it was dedicated to the saint because the noble patron of the place reportedly visited her tomb on Mount Sinai, bit off one of her fingers, and brought it back to Galatina. A relic that valuable had to have a basilica to house it.

The church, which dates from the 1300s, is plain on the outside...

...but its interior, and that of the attached cloister, are a riot of 15th- and 16th-century frescoes. And the insides live up to the promise of the finger-biting story.

Photos weren't allowed and I wasn't able to evade the watchman in order to take a picture of the Noah's ark panel, which shows the ark surrounded by the gray, bloated bodies of dead sinners, or the panel showing Death on horseback (or is it Plague?) laying waste to rich and poor alike.

But I did sneak around a corner and get a shot of this peculiarly gruesome crucifixion.

And I also managed to get one of this really alarming martyrdom of St. Agatha. As a bonus, the diocesan museum next door...

 ...boasts a reliquary housing what's supposed to be one of St. Agatha's breasts.

The cloister next door is covered with frescoes, too, and less carefully policed.. I'd love to know which saint this is supposed to be. Talk about nasty women!

There are also depictions of the Virtues. This one, of a woman stabbing herself in the chest, represents Patience.

That is exactly what patience feels like when you don't feel capable of having any.