Former Convent of S. Bernardino

On the Colle of Santa Lucia of Campli, the former Convent of San Bernardino stands in a state of neglect. It is the oldest of the Franciscan Reform of the Observance, built by S. Giovanni from Capestrano in 1449, on the ancient Church of S. Lucia demolished in 1476. Margaret of Austria, Duchess of Campli, on 28 June 1569 exempted the friars from the tax (gabella) on meat. She kept the body of B. Battista from Firenze, a Franciscan who lived and died in the convent on March 9, 1510. There was kept a cloak that belonged to the saint of  Capestrano (AQ). Transformed into a retreat in 1786, it avoided suppression. Closed in 1811, reopened in 1824, suppressed again in 1866. The friars returned in 1911, remaining there until 1950. In the lunette of the portal you can see a fifteenth-century fresco depicting the “Madonna and Child between St. Francis of Assisi and St. Bernardino da Siena ”, attributed to Matteo from Campli; in the intrados angels and colored festoons. The cloister with a well and 26 lunettes from 1727 frescoed with “Scenes from the Life of St. John of Capestrano” and the patrons' heraldic coats of arms is striking. In the refectory there are seventeenth-century frescoes by the Polish Sebastiano Majeski representing “Scenes from the New Testament”. From the Franciscan complex comes a late Gothic “polittico” of the fifteenth century and attributed to Giacomo da Campli, kept in the Civic Art Gallery of Teramo. To the left of the presbytery is a fresco of the “Franciscan Holy Martyrs of Japan”: it depicts St. Paul Miki and his companions, killed on a hill near Nagasaki in the 17th century.
 
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