The rebuilding of L'Aquila after 1703 quake. Death and rebirth

This essay analyses earthquakes’ emotional impacts on the city of L’Aquila, and the different attitudes of the community in coping with this tragic event after the 1703 earthquake, that seriously affected the architectural heritage. On that occasion, unlike what happened in other similar tragedies, the mourning caused by the destruction and its elaboration took place in a particular climate for the city. The seventeenth century had been a century of great architectural renewal. The earthquake of the first years of the following century represented, therefore, the opportunity to implement those building interventions dreamed and desired, and which only very slowly, and only in part, could have been implemented. The medieval city was cleared, with confidence in the future. The buildings of the new families were built on the land previously occupied by collapsed houses and the main churches were modified or rebuilt according to the new Baroque style. The rites of passage, in the elaboration of mourning, found their epiphany, in L’Aquila, in Baroque architecture.