The Cathedral of the Madonna del Ponte is the main worship place in Lanciano and bishop’s seat for the archdiocese of Lanciano – Ortona. This unique the church was built on three arches of a Roman bridge, the Diocleziano bridge. In 1088, during restructuring work on the bridge after an earthquake a statue of the Madonna and Child was discovered, which was renamed the Madonna of the bridge. The statue, an ancient Byzantine icon, had been hidden in the 8th century in an arch of the bridge to conceal it from the iconoclasts. The citizens of Lanciano decided to erect a place of worship to honour the Madonna and they did so in 1389. At the end of the 1700s the church was entirely rebuilt based on the design of engineer Eugenio Micchitelli. The interior, with a single nave, has piers - square bottomed pillars – with Corinthian capitals that sustain the vaulted ceiling all along the perimeter wall. On the sidewalls are located neoclassical altars with paintings, three of these have niches with statues of saints. On the right hand side is the chapel of the Holy Sacrament. The frescoes on the ceiling vaults are the work of the Neapolitan painter Giacinto Diano. The architecture of the church shows ranges from the chiaroscuro style to the beauty of the small niche with the ancient statue of the Madonna del Ponte situated at the back of the presbytery that is always illuminated by the eye of the dome.