Earthquake-hit church in L’Aquila ready to reopen

San Bernardino da Siena, the largest Renaissance church in L’Aquila, is due to reopen in May—more than six years after a major earthquake rocked the central Italian city and the surrounding region in April 2009. The scaffolds came down from the façade, which withstood the earthquake, in autumn 2014, but the wider reconstruction took longer. The damage to the cupola (dome) was so severe that part of the work was carried out using remote-controlled lifts “to avoid sending anyone underneath it”, says the architect Maurizio D’Antonio. The collapsed bell tower, which struck the apse and a nearby convent, has been rebuilt using recovered materials. Anti-seismic devices installed by earlier generations enabled the church to resist some of the earthquake’s impact, D’Antonio says. The project to recover the 15th-century structure and Baroque interior has cost an estimated €25m so far.