Santa Maria del Suffragio, commonly called the church of ''Anima Sante'' (Blessed Souls), is an 18th-century church in

L'Aquila L'Aquila ( , ) is a city and ''comune'' in central Italy. It is the capital city of both the Abruzzo region and of the Province of L'Aquila. , it has a population of 70,967 inhabitants. Laid out within medieval walls on a hill in the wide valle ...

, central

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...

. It was begun on October 10, 1713, ten years after the 1703 L'Aquila earthquake damaged the ''Confraternita del Suffragios former seat. The Roman architect Carlo Buratti was charged with the work. In 1770 Gianfrancesco Leomporri added a

Baroque The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...

façade, and years later, in 1805, the church was completed with a neoclassical dome by

Giuseppe Valadier Giuseppe Valadier (April 14, 1762 – February 1, 1839) was an Italian architect and designer, urban planner and archaeologist and a chief exponent of Neoclassicism in Italy. Biography The son of a goldsmith, Luigi (1726–1785), Valadier was born ...

. Being one of the most important churches of the city, Santa Maria del Suffragio also became one of the main symbols of the

2009 L'Aquila earthquake The 2009 L'Aquila earthquake occurred in the region of Abruzzo, in central Italy. The main shock occurred at 03:32 CEST (01:32 UTC) on 6 April 2009, and was rated 5.8 or 5.9 on the Richter magnitude scale and 6.3 on the moment magnitude scale; ...

when, on April 6, 2009, it suffered serious damages and its dome was almost entirely pulled down by the quake. The extensive damage to the church was a direct consequence of a lack of

retrofitting Retrofitting is the addition of new technology or features to older systems. Retrofits can happen for a number of reasons, for example with big capital expenditures like naval vessels, military equipment or manufacturing plants, businesses or go ...

. Although The church received a great deal of funding to be architecturally restored and aesthetically '''upholstered but lacked investment into the protection of its structural integrity; which is a disappointment as it was believed by many to be a building of cultural and architectural significance.

External links

The church of Anima Sante

YouTube video showing the dome's collapse
Houses completed in 1805

Maria Maria may refer to: People * Mary, mother of Jesus * Maria (given name), a popular given name in many languages Place names Extraterrestrial *170 Maria, a Main belt S-type asteroid discovered in 1877 *Lunar maria (plural of ''mare''), large, da ...

Buildings and structures in L'Aquila 1713 establishments in Italy Roman Catholic churches completed in 1805 1713 establishments in the Kingdom of Naples 19th-century Roman Catholic church buildings in Italy {{Italy-RC-church-stub