The church of St. Clare

The church of St. Clare in Sulmona has thirteenth-century origins linked to the name of the blessed Florisenda da Palena, who between 1260 and 1269 founded the church with an adjoining monastery of the Poor Clares. The church was rebuilt to a design by Bergamo architect Pietro Fantoni as part of the process of rebuilding the city after the 1706 earthquake. Damaged by another earthquake, that of May 1984, and by a series of reprehensible acts of vandalism, the church underwent a long phase of restoration that restored to its original splendor some frescoes by artists native to the area, most notably Alessando Salini and his Sposalizio della Vergine. By Salini, who was born in Sulmona in 1675 and died in Rome in 1764, is also another painting preserved in the adjacent diocesan museum: the Madonna and Child with Devotees, known as L'Avvocata. Second the legend precisely in the church of Santa Chiara confetti was born.