What to see · Lanciano

More places of interest

• Chiesa di San Biagio

  The church of San Biagio stands in larghetto Ricci, in the Lanciano Vecchio district, and is the oldest left in the walled town, mentioned as early as the eleventh century. It rises over an early medieval chapel dedicated to St George, of which the crypt and the room now used as the sacristy remain. In 1096 the Norman counts Drogo and Robert of Loritello, two brothers who jointly governed Adriatic Abruzzo, gave it to Rainolfo, bishop of Chieti, which suggests that the Normans had built it. In 1866 it was suppressed and reduced to a storehouse for the carabinieri barracks; it remained so until the fifties of the twentieth century, when it was restored.

  What to see

  The interior, a single nave, has been altered several times, but the exterior has kept its gabled form with buttresses on the sides. The bell tower, imposing, was built in 1345 at the wish of ser Scipio, archpriest of Archi, as a plaque on the tower itself says: it is of brick, with dentilled string courses and two Gothic two-light windows on each side.

  Inside are the statue of St Blaise as bishop, seated on a throne with his crozier, the Gothic group of the Annunciation, a stone baptismal font in the shape of a shell and the eighteenth-century Madonna dei Raccomandati, by Giacomo Colombo: it was in the church of San Giovanni, destroyed by the bombing of 1943. In 2004 two pointed-arch niches with medieval stuccoes were rediscovered, an Annunciation and a Crucifixion. The crypt, beneath the high altar, is square in plan, with small cylindrical columns and barrel vaults.

  Visiting

  The church has not resumed its former functions, and Mass is celebrated there only now and then: openings should be checked on the spot. It is the seat of the confraternity of Santa Maria dei Raccomandati, which celebrates the Madonna on 2 February, Candlemas, and St Blaise on the 3rd, with the anointing of throats and the sale of blessed taralli.

  Our editors' tip

  The tradition of the local historians placed a temple of Minerva here, and the crypt is said to have been made on the podium of a Roman shrine. An excavation in the area did in fact yield a terracotta half-bust of the goddess, which can now be seen in the Santo Spirito archaeological museum in Lanciano.

• Chiesa di Sant'Onofrio

  The church of Sant'Onofrio is the church of the hamlet of Lanciano that bears the same name. Today's was built in 1962, in place of an older church dedicated to the same saint, which stands at the top of a hill behind it: it dated from 1467, and the bombing of the Second World War damaged it so badly that it was closed for worship.

  What to see

  The new church is reached by two opposing flights of steps, leading to the doorway, closed by a pediment and set in a niche as tall as the whole façade. High up is a relief of St Onuphrius, above a marble architrave carved with the saint's name. The outer walls are of stones of very varied size, with cement joints; the projecting gabled roof is carried on concrete beams.

  The bell tower stands a little apart from the church: five levels, a pyramid spire and a peal of three bells. The interior has a single nave, with a semicircular apse marked by four windows and a modern wooden choir by the altar. On the right side is a chapel with the painting of Mary Immaculate, on the left the processional statue of St Onuphrius dressed as a hermit.

  Visiting

  Opening and Mass times should be checked with the parish.

  Our editors' tip

  Look towards the hill behind, where the old church stands: it is abandoned, but the perimeter walls remain, and the gabled façade, plain, with a single entrance and an oculus in the centre. Beside it a large cross has recently been raised, which is lit up at night.

• Museo diocesano di Lanciano

  The Museo diocesano di Lanciano is one of the most important museums of sacred art in Abruzzo. It was opened to the public in 2002 by Monsignor Carlo Ghidelli, after a long search for old works carried out by Monsignor Enzio d'Antonio in the archbishop's residence and in the town's churches, some of them deconsecrated for centuries. It is on the second floor of the archbishop's palace, formerly the seminary, which also houses the curia offices, the library and the diocesan historical archive: work on the palace in all likelihood began in 1590, when the old bishop's residence by the cathedral was left.

  What to see

  Nine rooms, arranged by theme, over about a thousand square metres: paintings, sculptures, goldsmiths' work, vestments, ex-votos, wooden furnishings, embroidery and manuscripts, from the thirteenth to the twentieth century, most of them from the cathedral. The first two rooms are devoted to the Madonna del Ponte, protectress of the town: ex-votos, pictures and jewels given between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries, brought here for safety, and wooden statues of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The oldest jewel is a pendant of 1601, in silver gilt, with a large rock crystal and four rubies.

  Among the goldsmiths' work are the fifteenth-century processional cross by Nicola da Guardiagrele and workshop, a crozier of the Sulmona school and a pontifical ewer marked 1603, probably Neapolitan. Among the paintings are a Christ carrying the Cross of the early sixteenth century, by a painter in the manner of Giorgione, the Madonna and Child signed by Iacovo de Lanziano and the sketch by Giacinto Diano, of 1788, for the lost decoration of the cathedral dome. Among the textiles a large set of hangings of the mid-eighteenth century stands out, painted in tempera and embroidered.

  Visiting

  Opening times and tickets should be checked with the museum or the curia; in 2018 restoration work began on the façade and on some of the rooms.

  Our editors' tip

  Before going up, look at the palace's entrance doorway, fifteenth-century, with a pointed arch. It was not made for this place: it was the door of the old church of the Annunziata, demolished to make the Neoclassical façade of the cathedral, and was reassembled on this front in 1819.

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