Chiesa di Santa Maria della Tomba

Sulmona's Church of Santa Maria della Tomba is known for its refined Romanesque facade, fourteenth-century frescoes and a bell cast in 1314. Beside the presbytery, an oratory preserves the statues associated with the city's Easter rite, the Madonna che scappa in piazza.

Why it matters

First recorded in the thirteenth century, the church gave its name to a medieval quarter that grew beyond Sulmona's older walls. Its full dedication is Santa Maria dalla Tomba Assunta in cielo. The name has been explained both by a local tradition linking the site with an ancient temple of Jupiter and by a structure once thought to be a tomb, which stood inside the church until it was removed in the seventeenth century.

What to notice

The splayed Gothic portal is framed by columns and pilasters with carved capitals; a relief of the Lamb of God appears on the architrave. Above it, the fifteenth-century rose window bears an inscription naming Palma de Amabile. Inside, three naves lead to a transept with three apses beneath an open timber roof. Fresco fragments include saints and Madonnas, among them an image of Saint Anne sheltering the Virgin and Child. The bronze bell cast by Bartolomeo da Pisa in 1314 was brought here from Santa Lucia. The oratory of the Confraternita di Santa Maria di Loreto contains statues carried in the Easter procession.

Context and history

The church was enlarged in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The 1706 earthquake destroyed its rear, leaving the facade, internal colonnade and bell tower standing. Its interior was renewed in 1857. In the 1970s, a restoration removed Baroque additions. The oratory beside the presbytery remains associated with the Easter rite of the Madonna che scappa in piazza.