Restoring Basilica To Cost Millions, Experts Say Louvre, British Museum Officials Offer Restoration Help

Art experts said Saturday it would cost tens of millions of dollars to restore the Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi after it was heavily damaged by two earthquakes that struck central Italy Friday.

“It will never be the same,” said Antonio Paolucci, a former culture minister leading a task force to oversee work on the basilica, whose renowned frescoes by the Italian master Giotto and other important Renaissance painters were damaged when a large part of the ceiling collapsed. Four people, including two Franciscan monks, were killed by falling debris in the church.

Pope John Paul II said he was saddened by damage to the 13th-century basilica, built to honor St. Francis, founder of the Franciscan order. It is an important monument for the Roman Catholic Church that is visited each year by thousands of pilgrims and tourists.

Speaking to Italian Catholics in Bologna, the pope also offered his condolences to the victims of the earthquakes, which devastated much of the central regions of Umbria and Marches. Ten people were killed, dozens injured, and about 12,000 people were left homeless.

Workers began clearing rubble from the hundreds of collapsed buildings and engineers inspected houses still standing to make sure they were safe. “There is a general fear among the population to return to their homes,” said Franco Barberi, the government’s undersecretary of civil protection.

In Assisi, firefighters removed debris from the basilica, carefully preserving pieces of mosaics and frescoes and stacking them in the square outside.

Offers to help restore the basilica poured in with the Louvre in Paris and the British Museum in London volunteering their experts. Officials said a bank account would be opened next week to accept donations for restoration work.

Paolucci, who gave the initial cost estimate of tens of millions of dollars, said structural repairs to the basilica would have to be done before restoration work on the frescoes could begin. He said he hoped the work would be completed by 2000, when the pope has called a Jubilee Year of the Roman Catholic Church to mark the second millennium of Christianity and millions of pilgrims are expected in Assisi.

The Franciscan community was in deep mourning. Agostino Gardin, world leader of the Franciscan order, said that celebrations for St. Francis’s name day, Oct. 4, usually held in the basilica, would be sharply curtailed.