St Clare’s Church

The church erected in the 13^th century and refurbished in the 16^th century was realized thanks to its benefactor Giosua I of Acquaviva.

A classic fifteenth-century portal opens the façade in brick. Inside St Clare’s Church presents a rectangular one-nave ground plan; a seventeenth-century High Chapel in golden stucco dedicated to the Immaculate Conception; a beautiful mosaic floor of 1852 attributed to the Venetian Giovanni Pellarini. One of Saint Clare’s friends founded the convent on the right-hand side of the church in the 13^th century, still run by the Clarisses.

According to a local legend, two visions of the Virgin Mary took place in the convent: the first one in 1809 during the Napoleonic religious repression. In that occasion, the Virgin Mary reassured Sister Giuditta Antonioli that the destiny of Atri’s convent was never to close down. The second was in 1862 when the image of Madonna with Child - today kept in the convent’s main choir - became alive and told Sister Maria Veronica De Petris that if all the convents of the world were to disappear ‘I would spare this one for you’.

The remains of Saint Eleanor, Saint Ercolano and Saint Massimo are kept in the monastery.