L'Aquila: 99 spouts and a city site under repair

L'Aquila rewards a slow half day: 99 spouts on one wall in the Rivera quarter, the national museum back in the Forte Spagnolo since December 2025 at €10, and a Renaissance facade a few streets from the scaffolding.

The fountain: 93 masks and 6 spouts

The Fontana delle 99 cannelle in the Rivera quarter is made of 93 carved stone masks plus 6 single spouts, and tradition puts its construction in 1272¹, in memory of the 99 castles said to have founded the city.

The stone is white and pink from the quarry at Genzano di Sassa, the same used for the facade of Collemaggio, laid across five basins on staggered levels in a trapezoidal plan with three faces. It served as a public washhouse into the early twentieth century.

The date is not certain. The regional source itself notes that some scholars place the fountain as it now stands entirely in the fifteenth century, so 1272¹ is tradition rather than record.

The MuNDA is back in the castle

The National Museum of Abruzzo returned to the Forte Spagnolo on December 15, 2025, after years in the converted slaughterhouse at Borgo Rivera where it moved in 2015. In 2026 it opens Tuesday to Sunday 9:00 am to 7:00 pm, closed Monday, ticket desk until 6:00 pm.

Entry is €10 full and €2 reduced, across 14 exhibition rooms holding works from the ninth to the sixteenth century. The sixteenth century fortress is worth the ticket on its own.

Those hours and prices come from a single ministry page. The museum's own site redirects and does not serve the timetable in readable text, so cross-checking was not possible: confirm before you go.

San Bernardino, and a facade of 1525

The Basilica of San Bernardino was built at the wish of Giovanni da Capestrano to hold the remains of Bernardino of Siena, translated here in 1472³. The Renaissance facade is the work of Cola dell'Amatrice, made between 1525³ and 1547³.

Inside, the plan is Baroque: three naves with six chapels a side and an octagonal central body under a dome. The carved, gilded and painted wooden ceiling was made between 1724³ and 1726³ by Ferdinando Mosca of Pescocostanzo.

Three works to find: the mausoleum of San Bernardino by Silvestro dell'Aquila of 1505³, the funeral monument of Maria Pereyra Camponeschi of 1488³ to 1490³, and an early sixteenth century glazed terracotta altarpiece by Andrea della Robbia. Opening hours and the state of post earthquake works are not published on the source we read.

70,803 people at 722 meters

L'Aquila had 70,803⁵ residents on January 1, 2026 on the ISTAT estimate, 35,143⁵ men and 35,660⁵ women. The town hall stands at 722⁴ meters, making this the third highest provincial capital in Italy after Enna at 928⁴ meters and Potenza at 827⁴.

The comune runs from 571⁴ to 2,622⁴ meters, a range of 2,051 meters. Few Italian towns hold a supermarket and a glacier cirque inside the same administrative boundary.

What the scaffolding actually means

The reconstruction data portal recorded 2,594⁶ approvals for the historic center at August 31, 2026, covering 6,949⁶ property units, with €3.14⁶ billion assessed and €1.87⁶ billion, 59.5%⁶, immediately fundable.

Read those as administrative figures. They count applications and money, not finished buildings, and the share of completed sites in the old town is not published as an official number anywhere we could find.

The city is legible anyway, and in places more legible than before: cleaned stone, propped facades, streets that reopen one at a time. See L'Aquila, the events year and the rebuilding story.

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