Santa Maria ad Cryptas

History

The Church of Santa Maria ad Cryptas (or of the Caves) is located about a kilometer from the center of the village of Fossa and a few kilometers from the Monastery of Santo Spirito (Ocre) in Ocre, upon which it depended.

Presumably, the church was initially built as a Roman-Byzantine style temple in the 9th or 10th century AD with a crypt from which it derived its name.

Four centuries later, a Gothic-Cistercian building was constructed on the previous temple by Benedictine craftsmen. Its construction on a slope required consolidation works with a buried counterfort wall along the entire valley side and two support pillars at the ends of the church's lateral wall. Among the stones of the external masonry, remnants from the buildings of the Roman city of Aveia, on which the current Fossa was later built, can be observed.

The church was severely damaged by the 2009 L'Aquila earthquake. On April 28, 2019, after a long restoration, it was reopened for worship, almost ten years after the earthquake.

Architecture

The main facade on the west side is very simple and has a gabled structure with an extension on the left side to add reinforcement on the valley side wall. The Gothic pointed portal is surmounted by a large rectangular window. The two pillars are adorned on the sides with columns topped with capitals decorated with rosettes, flowers, and palms. The capitals support lions (the one on the right has been lost) and a third one is above the portal arch. In the lunette, the remains of a fresco can be seen, of which only a few traces remain. The window above the portal does not align with the style of the facade and was presumably made more recently.

The rear facade is characterized by a triangular pediment and has two openings, the first below being long and narrow with double splaying, while the second above is small and square. Two more long and narrow windows with double splaying are found on each side of the church.

The interior of the church in Cistercian style has a single nave with three bays. An arch separates the nave from the presbytery, which is square in shape. Raised by three steps, the apsidal area is covered by a ribbed vault with four ribs resting on as many small columns.

In front of the presbytery is the staircase leading to the crypt, presumably derived from a hypogeum dedicated to the goddess Vesta. In the crypt, there is an altar made from a stone table resting on a column segment; there is a fragment of a fresco depicting the Crucifixion.

The side walls are divided into three bays by pilasters; on the left wall, instead of one of the pilasters, there is a half-column, probably from the city of Aveia.

The nave's ceiling is made of wooden trusses, but it is likely that it was originally masonry. Indeed, there are hints of arches and the support pillars for the arches of a probable pointed barrel vault similar to that of the Oratory of San Pellegrino in Bominaco: it is unknown whether the vault was never completed or if it collapsed after construction. …