Only medieval facade of one of Italian region’s most spiritually important sites is still standing after 6.6-magnitude quake

The basilica of San Benedetto had withstood the tests of time since the end of the 14th century.

But on Sunday, the church that paid homage to the patron saint of Europe, Saint Benedict, was reduced to a heap of rubble after a 6.6-magnitude earthquake ripped through the town of Norcia where it stood in the main square.

The basilica was considered one of the region’s most spiritually important sites. Now, only its medieval facade still stands, and centuries of work and other renovations to the interior, including a complete restructuring that was completed at the end of the 18th century, are gone.

News of the church’s destruction was confirmed in a four-word tweet sent by the monastery of San Benedetto, a Benedictine community in Norcia.

The Monks of Norcia (@monksofnorcia) La Basilica è crollata #terremoto - https://t.co/iDrWBvrbMS

The monks escaped largely unscathed, in part because they had moved to a makeshift monastery about a mile from Norcia after the August earthquake in nearby Amatrice that killed nearly 300 people.

The monks released a statement on Sunday morning, saying they were all safe, and were searching for victims who might require last rites.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A still from TV footage showing the damage to the basilica. Photograph: AFP/Getty

The statement, posted below an image of the ruined basilica, said: “May this image serve to illustrate the power of this earthquake, and the urgency we monks feel to seek out those who need the sacraments on this difficult day for Italy.”

The building contained a large painting, St Benedict and Totila, by Filippo Napoletano, which was completed in 1621, and another painting from the mid-1600s, Madonna and Norcia Saints, by the Roman painter Vincenzo Manetti.

The church was located on top of the ruins of a house that were said to be the birthplace of Saint Benedict and Saint Scholastica, and parts of the ancient Roman structure were still visible on the left side of the basilica. Some parts of the crypt walls contained opus reticulatum brickwork – a diamond-shaped style used in ancient Rome – while other walls contained traces of 14th-century frescoes, according to an Umbrian tourism website.

Italy earthquake: damage as central Italy hit again Read more

While the basilica was first constructed between 1290 and 1338, it was enlarged a few years later by the monks of Sant’Eutizio in Valcastoriana. A bell tower was erected in the 14th century but was badly damaged in an earthquake in 1703, and was then replaced by a smaller tower.

The town attracts pilgrims from all over the world who seek to honour Saint Benedict, seen in Catholicism as crucial to the founding of western civilisation, according to the Vatican journalist Edward Pentin.

The monks are likely to play a central role in the eventual rebuilding of Norcia and had begun an appeal on their website before Sunday’s quake. Norcia , a destination for food lovers, is known for its prosciutto, salami, cheese and wild boar.

The monks also put it on the map with their craft beer, which is called Birra Nursia, after the Latin name of the town, and is sold at local shops and hotels, as well as in the US through its website. The beer was reportedly served to cardinals during the papal conclave that elected Pope Francis.</s>Video: Town of Norcia reeling after latest quake in Italy

Lives have been turned upside down in Italy's historic town of Norcia, with residents displaced and much of the town reduced to rubble after Sunday's 6.6 magnitude earthquake. Jillian Kitchener reports.</s>The quake, which measured 6.6 according to the U.S. Geological Survey, was bigger than one on Aug. 24 that killed almost 300 people. Many people have fled the area since then, helping to avoid a new devastating death toll.

With thousands already made homeless, a leading seismologist warned that the earthquakes could go on for weeks in a domino effect along the central Apennine fault system.

The latest quake was felt across much of Italy, its epicenter close to the historic Umbrian walled town of Norcia, some 60 miles from the university city of Perugia.

Panicked Norcia residents rushed into the streets and the town's ancient Basilica of St. Benedict collapsed, leaving just the facade standing. Nuns, monks and locals sank to their knees in the main square in silent prayer before the shattered church.

"This is a tragedy. It is a coup de grace. The basilica is devastated," Bishop Renato Boccardo of Norcia told Reuters.

"Everyone has been suspended in a never-ending state of fear and stress. They are at their wits' end," said Boccardo, referring to the thousands of tremors that have rattled the area since August, including two serious quakes on Wednesday.

Italy's Civil Protection unit, which coordinates disaster relief, said numerous houses were destroyed on Sunday in the regions of Umbria and Marche, but either they were deserted at the time or most of the residents managed to escape in time.

Civil Protection chief Fabrizio Curcio said no deaths had been reported and around 20 people were injured, none of them critically. He said it was too early to say how many more people had lost their homes.

Prime Minister Matteo Renzi promised a massive reconstruction effort regardless of cost and took advantage of the disaster to resume his frequent criticism of the European Union's public finance rules.

"We will rebuild everything, the houses, the churches and the businesses," he told reporters. "Everything that needs to be done to rebuild these areas will be done."

He said he would have "no regard for technocratic rules" and would consider all money spent to make Italy's schools and hospitals earthquake-proof to be outside EU limits on budget deficits.

Local authorities said towns and villages already battered by August's 6.2 quake had suffered further significant damage.

"This morning's quake has hit the few things that were left standing. We will have to start from scratch," Michele Franchi, the deputy mayor of Arquata del Tronto, told Rai television.

Experts said Sunday's quake was the strongest here since a 6.9 quake in Italy's south in 1980 that killed 2,735 people .

The destruction of the Norcia basilica was the single most significant loss of Italy's artistic heritage in an earthquake since a tremor in 1997 caused the collapse of the ceiling of the Basilica of St Francis in Assisi, which is 80 km to the north.

The frescoed basilica, which is the spiritual, historic and tourist heart of Norcia, was built over the site of the home where the founder of the Benedictine order and his Sister St. Scolastica were born in 480.

The basilica and monastery complex dates to the 13th century, although shrines to St. Benedict and his sister had been built there since the 8th century.

Benedict founded the Benedictine order in Subiaco, near Rome. He died in 530 in the monastery at Monte Cassino, south of Rome, which was destroyed during World War Two. That monastery was later rebuilt.

A number of other churches were also ruined on Sunday, Italian media reported, including Norcia's Cattedrale di Santa Maria, which was built in the 16th century, while the town hall belltower had deep cracks running through its walls.

However, most of Norcia's homes appeared to have withstood the prolonged tremor, with residents praising years of investment by local authorities in anti-seismic protection.

In the nearby city of Rieti, patients were evacuated from a hospital to allow experts to check on structural damage, while hillroads across the region were littered with fallen rocks.

Sunday's earthquake was felt as far north as Bolzano, near the border with Austria and as far south as the Puglia region at the southern tip of the Italian peninsula.

It was also felt strongly in the capital, Rome, where transport authorities shut down the metro system for precautionary checks. Authorities also toured the city's main Roman Catholic basilicas looking for possible damage.

Italy sits on two geological fault lines, making it one of the most seismically active countries in Europe.

Its deadliest quake since the start of the 20th century came in 1908, when a tremor followed by a tsunami killed an estimated 80,000 people in the southern regions of Reggio Calabria and Sicily.</s>6.6 earthquake, Italy’s biggest since 1980, sends terrified residents fleeing for third time in nine weeks

ROME: Italy’s most powerful earthquake in 36 years dealt a new blow yesterday to the country’s seismically vulnerable heart, sending terrified residents fleeing for the third time in nine weeks and flattening a revered six-century-old church.

Fabrizio Curcio, head of the national civil protection agency, said around a dozen people had been injured but that there did not appear to have been any fatalities.

“We are checking, there are several people injured but for the moment we have had no reports of victims,” Curcio said.

The quake struck struck at 7.40am (0640 GMT) near the small central mountain town of Norcia, unleashing a shock felt in the capital Rome and even in Venice, 300 kilometres away.

It measured 6.6 on the so-called moment magnitude scale, according to US geologists, while Italian monitors estimated it at 6.5.

It was Italy’s biggest quake since a 6.9-magnitude events struck the south of the country in 1980, leaving 3,000 people dead.

Norcia’s 14th-century Basilica of Saint Benedict, built on the reputed birthplace of the Catholic saint, was reduced to rubble.

The church is looked after by an international community of Benedictine monks based in a local monastery which attracts some 50,000 pilgrims every year.

“It was like a bomb went off,” the town’s deputy mayor, Pierluigi Altavilla told Rai News 24.

“We are starting to despair. There are too many quakes now, we can’t bear it anymore.”

Visibly upset, some of the monks and other residents knelt in prayer before the ruins.

The basilica was inspected last week by experts from the ministry of culture and earmarked for structural repair work which could not be carried out.

Guiseppe Pezzanesi, mayor of Tolentino in the neighbouring Marche region, said the small town had “suffered our blackest day yet.”

“The damage is irreparable. There are thousands of people in the streets, terrified, crying. Let’s hope that is an end to it, the people are on their knees psychologically.”

The quake’s epicentre was located at a very shallow depth of one kilometre, six kms north of Norcia, according to the US Geological Survey (USGS), which measured the magnitude at 6.6.

Italy’s institute of geology and vulcanology (IGNV) measured the quake at 6.5 and said it had been preceded by a 6.1 magnitude shock an hour earlier.

It came four days after quakes of 5.5 and 6.1 magnitude hit the same area and nine weeks after nearly 300 people died in an Aug 24 quake that devastated the tourist town of Amatrice at the peak of the holiday season.

The 13th-century civic tower in Amatrice, which was damaged but left standing by the August quake, collapsed on Sunday.

As with Wednesday’s tremors, the impact was mitigated by the fact that any buildings deemed vulnerable to seismic activity had been evacuated.

“Everything collapsed. I can see columns of smoke, it’s a disaster, a disaster,” Marco Rinaldi, the mayor of Ussita, one of the pretty mountain villages hit hardest by the last quake, told journalists.

“I was sleeping in my car, I saw hell break out,” he said.

The quake was powerful enough to set off car alarms in Rome, 120 kilometres from the epicentre, and the capital’s underground rail network was closed for structural safety checks.

Much of Italy’s land mass and some of its surrounding waters are prone to seismic activity with the highest risk concentrated along its mountainous central spine.

Italy straddles the Eurasian and African tectonic plates, making it vulnerable to seismic activity when they move.

In addition to the Amatrice disaster in August, just over 300 perished when a quake struck near the city of L’Aquila in 2009.

In 1980 tremors near Naples left 3,000 dead and an estimated 95,000 died in the 1908 Messina disaster, when a quake in the waters between mainland Italy and Sicily sent massive waves crashing into both coasts. — AFP
The 14th century Basilica of St. Benedict in the town of Norcia is destroyed.