Santuario di Santa Maria in Herulis

Sacred place where it is always beautiful Come back.

I did not know of the existence of this shrine a stone's throw from my home. A truly suggestive place to visit

I will be biased..because I got married .... but it is a very nice church especially the statue of the madonna in fig wood.

About a kilometer from the town, the parish church of Santa Maria in Herulis rises: founded probably in the early Middle Ages, it was rebuilt and remodeled in the following centuries. The right wall of the sacristy preserves a portion of the pre-Romanesque building, with a splayed single-lancet window, while outside the left wall is a tile with the date 1693, the year of a probable restoration. In the walls of the nave are inserted materials probably recovered from the ruins of a pre-existing Roman villa, such as the opus spicatum blocks on the left side of the building. Inside, with a single nave, with trusses painted with geometric motifs, there are frescoes and stuccoes from various eras: in the area to the right of the presbytery are the remains of early fifteenth-century paintings [1] (the Evangelists, a triptych of the Virgin between a holy martyr and Saint Eligius, two figures of saints); in the large space above the triumphal arch there are frescoes, of different periods (perhaps due to renovations and restorations, but ascribable in principle to the Renaissance and Baroque periods), divided into three panels, with the Apostles in the side panels, the Trinity in the central one, together with the Virgin and s. John the Evangelist; between one panel and another, two angels with candles and one with a censer are depicted. On the right wall, a votive fresco, perhaps from the seventeenth century, depicting the Archangel Raphael, and another, also from the 16th century XVI-XVII, but now reduced to a fragment, representing the Pietà, which once overlooked a lateral altar which has now disappeared. Noteworthy is the polyptych in masonry that acts as a shovel to the main altar, and in the center of which is the niche with the fourteenth-century statue of the Madonna and Child, a work of the Umbrian school with French influences. [2] The sculpture was stolen in 1979, and recovered in 1986. Sacred furnishings were also stolen, never found, including a large painting of the Madonna del Carmine, which was on the seventeenth-century left side altar. Unfortunately, following the heavy interventions of the 1950s, the wooden choir was destroyed, once located above the main entrance and accompanied by a pipe organ whose traces have also been lost, and the stone portal, with a frescoed lunette , described by Vincenzo Balzano [3]. It should be noted that, despite being outside the town, S. Maria is the parish church of Ripattoni already in a document dated 27 December 1485, although for convenience the Sacraments were administered in the church of S. Silvestro

Ancient church dating back to the year one thousand, recently restored. It holds a splendid wooden statue of the Madonna and Child.

Beautiful welcoming, spiritual, characteristic, for weddings to visit

Bellante (Teramo) is a large town located at m.355 s.l.m. on the Teramo hills. Going up from S.S.80 along the road that passes near the hamlet of Ripattoni, you come to the junction that leads to the Church of S. Maria in Herulis. It is of probable early medieval foundation and the first documents that tell us about this church date back to 1485, during the feudal dominion of the Acquaviva. The building has a gabled roof and the entrance is preceded by a small arcade with round arches supported by brick columns with a quadrangular plan. On the sides of the simple portal are two narrow windows with round arches. From the rear wall rises a bell tower for two bells. Surely restored in 1694, as evidenced by a tile, it had other interventions around the seventies of the last century. The interior preserves numerous clearly visible frescoes.

Sanctuary of Santa Maria in Herulis About one kilometer from the town, stands the parish church of Santa Maria in Herulis: probably founded in the early Middle Ages, it was rebuilt and remodeled in the following centuries. The right wall of the sacristy preserves a portion of the pre-Romanesque building, with a splayed single lancet window, while outside the left wall there is a tile with the date 1693, the year of a probable restoration. The walls of the nave contain materials probably recovered from the ruins of a pre-existing Roman villa, such as the blocks of opus spicatum on the left side of the building. Inside, with a single nave, with a trussed roof painted with geometric motifs, there are frescoes and stuccos from various eras: in the area to the right of the presbytery you can see the remains of paintings from the early fifteenth century [2] (the Evangelists, a triptych of the Virgin between a martyr saint and Saint Eligius, two figures of saints); in the large space above the triumphal arch there are frescoes, from different periods (perhaps due to renovations and restorations, but generally attributable to the Renaissance and Baroque age), divided into three panels, with the Apostles in the side panels, the Trinity in the central one, together with the Virgin and St. John the Evangelist; between one panel and the other, two angels with candles and one with a censer are depicted. On the right wall, a votive fresco, perhaps from the seventeenth century, depicting the Archangel Raphael, and another, also from the sixteenth-seventeenth centuries, but now reduced to a fragment, representing the Pietà, which once dominated a side altar that has now disappeared. Noteworthy is the masonry polyptych that serves as an altarpiece to the high altar, and in the center of which is the niche with the 14th-century statue of the Madonna and Child, a work of the Umbrian school with French influences. [3] The sculpture was stolen in 1979, and recovered in 1986. Sacred furnishings, never found, were also stolen, including a large painting of the Madonna del Carmine, which was located on the seventeenth-century side altar on the left. Unfortunately, following the heavy interventions of the 1950s, the wooden choir loft, once located above the main entrance and equipped with a pipe organ of which traces have also been lost, and the stone portal, with frescoed lunette , described by Vincenzo Balzano [4]. It should be noted that, despite being outside the town, S. Maria is already the parish church of Ripattoni in a document dated December 27, 1485, even if for convenience the sacraments were administered in the church of S. Silvestro [5]. On 2 July 2019 the Bishop of Teramo-Atri Msgr. Lorenzo Leuzzi erected the church in a diocesan sanctuary [6].