Driven by the memory of those who had died, Passalacqua, 46, and hundreds of volunteers immediately went to work salvaging the irreplaceable centuries-old frescoes that were smashed into hundreds of thousands of tiny pieces. In a little more than two years, they have restored two of eight 9-ft.-high painted saints that crashed from the arching walls near the entrance. The basilica, its ancient structure stabilized by engineers, has now reopened—a feat hailed by all Italy as miraculous.
Virtually no one standing amid the rubble the day after the quakes believed the basilica, possibly the best-known in Christendom after St. Peter's in Rome, or its art could ever be saved. "There were enormous black holes in the ceiling," recalls Passalacqua. "There was the unforgettable feeling of death."
But Passalacqua, who works for the government in Umbria, understood what had to be done. As volunteers from all over the world streamed to the sacred site, she had them cover the basilica's floor with mattresses to keep falling fragments of painted plaster from shattering. She gathered wooden crates from grocers and instructed her untrained troops to sort even the tiniest pieces by size, color and design. "I thought everybody should get to help," she says. "These paintings belong to the world."
A month later the sorting and sifting were over, and as the volunteers and TV crews departed, speculation mounted that the restoration would languish. But Passalacqua, a native of nearby Perugia who had fallen in love with the frescoes while working on restorations at the basilica from 1988 to 1996, grew even more determined. The feisty daughter of a police marshal and a homemaker, she buttonholed the Italian minister of culture when he visited the basilica and persuaded him to commit more resources. "Paola transmits her energy to everybody," says Arnaldo Bonzi, 64, whose photo-developing company provided full-size photographs of the original frescoes to guide the work.
When the basilica reopened in November 1999, it did so with Sts. Rufino and Vittorino looking down from the ceiling, marred, but recognizable as the figures Giotto or his followers are believed to have painted in 1295. Passalacqua, working with 14 assistants, hopes to complete the restoration of the other six saints and the older Cimabue frescoes in about three years. "Without Paola's passion," says Bonzi, "it wouldn't have been possible."
Bruce Frankel
Sarah Delaney in Assisi
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Saved by the Bell Reunion
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