Clipeology and UFOs in the Madonna D’Appari Sanctuary

3 January 202212 February 2023 Cesare Valocchia 0 Comments

Pictures of UFOs in a Sanctuary?

The Sanctuary of the Madonna d ‘Appari is located in Italy between the hamlets of Paganica and Camarda within a gorge on the road that leads to the Gran Sasso mountain chain. It is a predominantly a limestone area. Always looking for unknown flying objects in the ancient frescoes, I became curious about a series of objects out of context and depicted in the aisles of the Sanctuary.

The clipeology branch of ufology studies and tries to identify in engravings, paintings and documents objects that have no scientific basis and represent the extraterrestrial presence in the past.
In fact, sometimes our mind when analyzing representations that recall figures of objects coming from space incongruent with the context tries to lead everything to what it knows, the phenomenon is called pareidolia and this is what happens when looking at a rock, a cloud, where the one who look sees a dog, a dragon, a heart, and so on.

Let us now return to the Sanctuary.

The name of this place originates from the apparition of Our Lady of Sorrows with the dead Christ in her womb in the 15th century to the shepherdess Maddalena Chiaravalle. At the beginning the population built a votive shrine dedicated to the Virgin and then a small temple built on the rocky wall.

The expansion of the structure dates back to 1519 with an opening towards the neighboring Raiale stream, while the enlargement of the central body is subsequent to 1559.
The structure develops mainly in length and height with a bell gable to surmount the building.

The portal is very simple, the only decorative elements on the front are the fresco in the lunette and a small circular window inside a single nave divided into two arches. In the back wall on the right side there is a secondary entrance overlooked by a frescoed lunette.

Madonna col Bambino tra Santi — Madonna and Child with Saints

The presbytery area is asymmetrical with the context as it follows the rocky profile on which the Sanctuary rests. This area is the oldest part of the hermitage, to the right of the altar there is a small niche with the fresco of the Pietà dating back to the 15th century. The paintings that appear on the walls of the presbytery date back to the XV-XVII century, inside which episodes from the life of Jesus are represented.
Behind the altar there is a small Sacristy and a small staircase that leads to a very narrow eremitical environment.

In 1999 the sanctuary underwent restoration by the superintendency. In 2009 it was damaged during the L’ Aquila earthquake and subsequently restored with opening to the public in 2011. Now, however, I want to show you something in the frescoes that the painters who took part in the Sanctuary wanted to represent as evidence of what I think they had seen or that in any case also era was common to see.