Chiesa dei Santi Pietro e Paolo

Facing its own small square in the older quarter of Pescasseroli, the parish church of Saints Peter and Paul has been rebuilt more than once, and each rebuilding left a layer. Inside it keeps the object the town values above all its possessions: a wooden Madonna and Child carved around the thirteenth century.

Why it matters

This is the spiritual and civic centre of Pescasseroli, and its documented past reaches back to the beginnings of the town itself. The regional tourism authority records the church as erected in the twelfth century; the park authority's town sheet lists the parish among the settlement's earliest historic landmarks, dated around 1100, and local church histories cite medieval papal documents naming a church of San Paolo here. Whatever its first form, the building that stands today is essentially Gothic — the result of a complete reconstruction after a medieval earthquake — reshaped again after the earthquake of 1915. Inside, devotion focuses on a wooden statue of the Madonna col Bambino from around the thirteenth century, a dark, precious survival that gives the church an importance far beyond the parish boundaries. The parish is dedicated to Saints Peter and Paul and also venerates the Madonna Incoronata.

What to notice

The post-earthquake Gothic rebuilding is reflected in the pointed arcades and vaulted nave. The Madonna venerated as the Incoronata is a small carved figure holding the Child and a globe; local tradition dates it to the thirteenth century. The church histories describe a Byzantine-influenced type. The building's fabric includes medieval walling and later repairs.

Context and history

The church grew with the settlement. Local Marsica histories place a cult building here before the year 1000 on the site of an earlier monastic cell, dependent on an abbey under Montecassino, and cite the town and its church of San Paolo in papal bulls of the twelfth century; the present dedication pairs the two apostles. The decisive break came with a medieval earthquake: the regional portal records the rebuilding in Gothic style after a quake, which local studies date to the decades following the earthquake of 1349. A second catastrophe struck on 13 January 1915, when the Marsica earthquake devastated the whole region; the church was severely damaged and remained unusable for years until restorations completed in 1937 brought the building back into use and, according to local accounts, uncovered parts of the older fabric. Further work followed after later twentieth-century seismic events. The wooden Madonna has its own itinerary of survival: tradition holds that it was first kept in the church by the castle before transfer to the parish, and it was cleaned and restored in 1998. A plenary indulgence attributed to Pope Eugene IV for its feast days attests how far its reputation once reached.