Italy Guide
Abruzzo and Molise
Palazzo Annunziata
Address: Corso Ovidio
The Annunziata is a Gothic-Renaissance palazzo adjoining a flamboyant Baroque church. It was established by a confraternity to take care of the citizens from birth until death, its steps crowded with the ill and destitute, but these days, its steps are a hangout for the town's teenagers during the evening passeggiata. Note the external decoration designed to remind onlookers of the cycles of life and death. The most intriguing statue, however, is just inside the entrance: Ovid, metamorphosed from pagan poet of love into an ascetic friar. Inside the Annunziata are three museums: one (undergoing a lengthy restoration) with exhibits on local costumes and transhumance – the practice of moving sheep to summer pastures – and examples of work by Sulmona's Renaissance goldsmiths, a trade that continues here today, as evidenced by the number of jewellers' shops along the Corso; another, the Museo Civico (daily 9am–1pm; €3), has local sculpture and paintings from the sixteenth to seventeenth centuries; and a third, the Museo "in situ" (Tues– Sun 10am–1pm; free), shows the excavations of a Roman villa inhabited from the first century BC to the second century AD, abandoned suddenly along with many other houses in the valley when a landslide or an earthquake struck. Among the fragments of fabulously coloured wall painting are depictions of Pan, Eros, Dionysus and Ariadne, and there are several floor mosaics, all well labelled.