Ex Chiesa di Santa Caterina - Fototeca Comunale

On Corso Vittorio Emanuele in Potenza Picena, a former church has become the town's memory bank. The complex of Santa Caterina d'Alessandria, first built in the fourteenth century, now houses the municipal photographic archive — over one hundred thousand images — beside a Renaissance triptych and the traces of a Roman bath.

Why it matters

Few adaptive reuses in the Marche knit past and present so tightly. The complex began as a religious site in the fourteenth century; restored and inaugurated in its new form on 28 November 2003, it became home in 2005 to the Fototeca Comunale named for Bruno Grandinetti, whose heirs donated a substantial collection of more than one hundred thousand documents — photographs, negatives, slides and glass plates. The archive also keeps the funds of two photographers of Porto Potenza, Araldo Polidori and Iginio Ceccotti, whose negatives and plates record daily life along this stretch of the Adriatic coast and in the nearby villages. A deconsecrated church is thus doing what it has always done: gathering the community's image of itself, only now in silver gelatin and glass rather than fresco.

What to notice

The nave holds the art. Look for the wooden triptych of 1507 by Paolo Bontulli di Percanestro, showing the Madonna with Child and Saints James the Greater and Rocco — described on the official page as a masterpiece of sacred art, belonging to the parish of Santi Stefano e Giacomo and restored in 2013. Around it hang three religious canvases of the eighteenth century by unknown hands, a reminder that the church's later life was served by local painters whose names have not survived. The building itself rewards attention: the official page records a thermal basin of Roman date inside the complex, and a medieval-Renaissance funerary plaque, evidence that the site's story runs deeper than its fourteenth-century foundation. A vaulted brick hall dedicated to Antonio Giannini, founder of the Associazione Amici della Musica, preserves another layer of the complex's cultural history.

Context and history

Santa Caterina stands on Corso Vittorio Emanuele, the main axis of the upper town; its proximity to the Collegiata reflects Potenza Picena's growth along this street. The borgo, called Monte Santo until it took the name Potenza Picena after unification, expanded along this street in the early modern centuries, and Santa Caterina, dedicated to Catherine of Alexandria, served the devotional needs of that growth. The complex's conversion, sealed by the 2003 inauguration, follows the region's habit of finding civic uses for redundant churches; the choice of a photographic archive gave the building a mission suited to its scale — conservation, cataloguing and quiet study rather than crowds. Managed with the Fotoclub Potenza Picena, whose seat is also in the complex, the Fototeca has turned three family archives into public heritage, documenting a century of the town and its seaside frazione from darkrooms that no longer exist.