On 13 May 2024 the church of Sant'Antonio opened to worshippers again after seven years of building work, and after a far longer wait before that: the earthquake of 23 November 1980 had made it unsafe and it had stayed shut ever since. As for the age of the building, nobody knows it exactly: it rests on the remains of a Roman basilica, which had itself been planted on four defensive towers, while other accounts speak of a single Lombard tower. Dating it is hard precisely because nothing here ever started from nothing.
What to see
The present dedication is the last in a series. This was once the church of San Bartolomeo, the parish of Ripacandida's ancient patron saint and one of the two that shared the town. In 1540 a bull from the bishop of Melfi suppressed both of them, San Bartolomeo and San Nicola, and merged them into the single parish of the new mother church of Santa Maria del Sepolcro. From then on the building lost the role it had and changed its titular saint, but the walls stayed where they were, on top of the towers.
Visiting
The church has only just become visitable again: after forty-four years of closed doors the services have barely restarted, and opening times follow the parish rather than a tourist calendar. If you find it open, look first at the way the building meets the ground on the side where the drop is greatest: the lower part is what has come through every rebuilding.
Our editors' tip
Line the two churches up: from here climb to the mother church on Piazza del Popolo and look in the sacristy for the «Saint Bartholomew» by Gaetano Recco. He is the saint who gave this building its name before it became Sant'Antonio, and finding him up there, inside a painting, tells the story of the parish's move better than any plaque.