From the right-hand aisle of the collegiate church of Guglionesi you go down into a 12th-century crypt: small bays divided by slender columns, round arches. Together with the apses, this is what survives of the older church of San Pietro, and it is the finest part of the building. The vaults once carried a full cycle of 16th-century frescoes by a local painter. Two scenes are left — the Flood with Noah's Ark, and the Tower of Babel — and they are enough to measure the loss.
The foundation date is not certain. The 11th century is the likely answer, following a vow made to the Virgin by the Norman commander Robert Guiscard, whose men took the area in 1060. Tradition holds that on the night of 2–3 June 1102 the remains of Saint Adam the Abbot were brought here; he has been the town's patron ever since. A restoration begun in 1746 dragged on for fifty years, and the church reopened for worship only in 1796, with the late Baroque arrangement it still has and a reversed orientation.
What to see
The façade faces north and is divided into three sections by mixtilinear pilaster strips. The two small side doors are topped by a quatrefoil window; the central portal, far larger, has a Baroque overdoor with a niche and the town's coat of arms. Its upper part is a 20th-century completion and carries a clock in the tympanum. The bell tower stands against the right-hand end: four superimposed Baroque orders, closed by a pyramidal spire of iron clad in brick. Walk round the right flank and the three semicircular apses of the original church come into view.
Inside are three aisles with 18th-century stucco and heavy piers carrying arches of unequal height. Above the high altar hangs a panel of the Assumption dated 1572, given by Cesare Ferrante, then bishop of Termoli: it was painted by an artist of the school of Marco dal Pino, after a picture by the Sienese master now in Naples. Look also for the triptych by Michele Greco da Valona with the Madonna delle Grazie between Saint Sebastian and Saint Roch, the wooden choir and pulpit, and the altar of Saint Adam with its large canvas of the saint in ecstasy.
Our editors' tip
In the crypt, find the fresco cycle painted in 1587 with the life of Saint Adam, and the gilded wooden altarpiece showing him in ecstasy above a medieval Guglionesi. The patron's relics stand alongside, with his silver statue, 33 kilos of it.