Italians mourn cultural losses as they bury victims
AMATRICE, Italy — This was once a quiet hilltop town in the rustic countryside of northern Lazio, relatively untouched for over 1,000 years. Now, in the wake of Wednesday’s devastating 6.2-magnitude earthquake, this medieval village is little more than a pile of rubble, already a memory.
At least 291 people died across central Italy during and after the earthquake, and the body count may still rise in the days ahead. Funeral services for the 50 victims killed in the Marches region were held Saturday in the cathedral of Ascoli Piceno. Italian President Sergio Mattarella and Prime Minister Matteo Renzi attended.
In addition to the human cost of Wednesday’s tragedy, Italian authorities are beginning to assess what the loss of Amatrice and similar small, ancient and remote towns means for the country’s extensive cultural heritage.
In a preliminary report issued Friday, the Carabinieri Art Squad — a branch of the Italian national police — listed more than 50 historic sites gravely damaged or destroyed in the earthquake. Most of them were small village churches that have stood in dusty town squares for centuries, marking the events that still define the cycle of life in rural Italy: christenings, weddings, funerals.
In Amatrice, known as the town of “100 churches,” at least 15 were destroyed — including Sant’Agostino, a 15th-century structure decorated with elaborate frescoes and a rose window on its facade. What does remain is the town’s clock tower, with the hands stopped at 3:36, the moment Wednesday morning when the earthquake struck.
For art historians, Amatrice and the other nearby towns affected have always been frozen in time, and their unspoiled longevity — as opposed to any specific building or work of art — was their true legacy.
Philippe Daverio, a well-known Italian author and art critic, said the major loss in the earthquake is the simple, rural esthetic that towns such as Amatrice represented, a quintessentially Italian style.
“It’s an age-old way of constructing,” he said of the architecture in these towns, “very simple, very rustic, with lines that seem to approach the horizon.”
Survivors of the earthquake, crammed into tents and makeshift camps outside these destroyed towns, share this view: Some of them lost their families, many lost their homes, but all of them lost a way of life that stretches back centuries.