CHIESA DI SANTA MARIA A MARE

The Romanic church of Santa Maria a Mare, commonly called "the Annunziata", is the last extant evidence, though the bombardments of the Second World War, of the Medieval Giulianova, called Castel San Flaviano (and before Castrum Novum Piceni), destroyed in the battle of the Tordino in 1460. Founded upon a previous Roman building, it originated in the tenth century, maybe from a Benedictine church, place of meeting for the soldiers who were going to leave toward the Holy Lands from the near-by port. The present aspect of the church, after the restoration of the Sixties, reproduces the one of the thirteenth century. Entirely made of brick, the gabled façade with a rib-vaulted belfry has little hanging arches on the top. The magnificent portal, made of marble, travertine and porphyry, is decorated with reliefs and sculptures, carried out by Raimondo del Podio, fourteenth-century carver from Atri. The interior, adjusted and restored several times, consists now of two naves divided by polymorph pillars with brick and stone capitals and round arches. On the left wall it is still possible to see the arcades which were later walled up, trace of the previous structure consisting in a nave and two aisles with apses at the top.