The cathedral of the Madonna del Ponte is the main church of Lanciano and the cathedral of the archdiocese of Lanciano-Ortona; it has been a minor basilica since 1909 and a national monument since 1940. It stands on a bridge: three arches that tradition calls the bridge of Diocletian. The Roman origin is disputed, because the inscription that would prove it, found in 1785 by the scholar Uomobono Bocache, has been lost, and Theodor Mommsen already considered almost all his inscriptions to be forgeries; archaeologists have, however, found traces of a probable Roman bridge of the third century at the level of the medieval one. According to tradition, during the rebuilding of the bridge the masons found in a niche a terracotta statuette of the Madonna and Child, hidden in the eighth century to save it from the iconoclasts: placed in a shrine on the bridge, it drew so many worshippers that in 1389 a church was built. By 1443 the church occupied the whole bridge, and a second one had to be made. Today's building is an eighteenth-century reconstruction, directed by the engineer Eugenio Michitelli; the façade, begun in 1819, was never finished in its upper part.
What to see
The façade has a projecting section, the portico, closed at the top by a balustrade; the outer walls are of brick. The bell tower, of the early seventeenth century, is detached from the church and has three levels. The interior has a single nave, with pilasters with Corinthian capitals carrying the vault and Neoclassical altars along the walls. In a niche at the back of the presbytery is the polychrome terracotta statue of the Madonna del Ponte. On the right side is the chapel of the Holy Sacrament, with vaults frescoed by the Neapolitan painter Giacinto Diano.
Beneath the church is the last of the successive bridges, built between 1512 and 1583: sturdy brick arches with cross vaults, which join the three great arches visible from the park below. Reinforced in 1933 after the Maiella earthquake, and long used as a diocesan storehouse and the municipal fish market, it was renovated in the sixties and became the Auditorium Diocleziano. Between 1992 and 1999 an archaeological route was opened beneath the square, linking it with the sanctuary of the Eucharistic Miracle.
Visiting
Opening times of the cathedral and access to the bridge and the underground route should be checked with the diocese or the town of Lanciano.
Our editors' tip
Pay attention to the bell tower at noon: at the top is a small cannon that is fired every day to mark the hour. The Squilla rings there too, the bell that on the evening of 23 December gives the signal for a Lanciano tradition: families gather at home, children kiss their fathers' hands as a sign of respect and receive their presents.
