Santa Maria Assunta

Santa Maria Assunta stands beside the Oratorio di San Pellegrino and is the main church of Bominaco. Dating from the 11th century, it is one of the best-preserved Romanesque churches in Abruzzo: three apses, a nave and two aisles, carved capitals depicting animals and foliage, and a simple stone pulpit. The building has never been substantially altered.

The interior is spare and beautiful in the way that early Romanesque churches often are — the builders trusted the quality of the stone and the proportions of the space to do the work that later centuries would cover with decoration. Access is with the same custodian who opens the adjacent oratorio. The two buildings are always visited together.

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The church was built in the 11th century on the foundations of an earlier structure, and the stonework has the quality of builders who knew exactly what they were doing. The three apses on the east end are textbook Romanesque: rounded, rhythmic, perfectly proportioned. Inside, the decoration is almost entirely absent — bare stone, a few carved capitals, light falling through narrow windows. After the painted intensity of the adjacent oratorio, the austerity feels deliberate and appropriate.