Established at the end of 2002, the complex includes the Diocesan Museum of Sacred Art, the Diocesan Library, the Municipal Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art, and an artistic Nativity Scene. The former Monastery of Santa Chiara, founded around 1260 by Florisenda da Palena, is located in one of the most characteristic and significant places of Sulmona’s historical centre, between the main town square and the 14th century town wall. The monastery is an interesting example of cloistered monastic settlement, both for its importance at the regional level and for the complex construction events that characterised its development: from its birth to the devastation caused by earthquakes, in particular those of 1456 and 1706, and to subsequent reconstructions, from the suppression of 1866 to subsequent uses.

Despite the alterations it has undergone over time, the convent of the Poor Clares is still today a valid representation of cloistered life, due to the organisation of the rooms and the rigorous way in which it communicates with the outside world. The ground floor was occupied by a series of vast rooms such as parlor, inner chapel, refectory, kitchen, cellars and other service rooms. The upper floor housed the boarding school, the dormitory and various work and meeting rooms; an internal corridor allowed the nuns to access both the women’s galleries to attend liturgical celebrations and the second floor of the organ, which was reserved for them to accompany the religious services held in the church of Santa Chiara with their singing.

A key element of the complex is the parlor, now a reading room, where the nuns, through grates, were allowed to interact and talk with their relatives and exchange objects by means of small wheels on the sides. This distribution of the rooms has basically remained unchanged over time. A series of houses, which were placed in the middle of the steps at the entrance leading up from the square, were inhabited by the keepers and peasants who worked the land within the walls of the monastery, thus acting as a filter with the outside and as a protection. The complex represents an interesting historical and artistic stratification that remained unchanged over the centuries!