Restoration

After the earthquake on September 26, 1997, the most urgent task was to secure the structure and the painted plaster in the lower church and upper church, which was subjected to further tremors until into October. It was also necessary to carefully sift through the resulting rubble to search for fragments of the frescoes. With the help of the documentary photographs, which the restoration workshop, under the leadership of the Roman Istituto Centrale del Restauro, also requested from the photo library of the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz and which show the complete state of the frescoes after their restoration in 1977 in details, the reconstruction of the four destroyed pairs of saints in the front bay arch was completed. They were largely mounted again in their original location in 2001. In addition, the restoration of all wall paintings in the upper church was completed in 2005. The fragments of the two collapsed vault fields containing the portrayals of Matthew the Evangelist and St. Hieronymus, which number more than 120,000 in the case of the Matthew fresco, have so far been reconstructed only partially at the current point in time. This makes it all the more important that professional photo campaigns accompanied by academics document our cultural heritage in its changeable state.