because of its importance in religious history, sits in isolation at the end of a long rectangular sward of grass at the southwest edge of the town.

The striking jewel-box effect of the exterior is due to a pattern of blocks of alternating pink and white stone; the interior, on the other hand, is massive and austere.

In 1274, while traveling through L'Aquila, a hermit from Morrone named Pietro, founder of the Celestine Order, spent the night on a nearby hill, the Colle di Maggio, and had a dream in which the Virgin Mary, surrounded by angels at the top of a golden stairway, asked him to build a church there in her honor.

A Holy Door similar to the one in Rome was added to the church in the 14th century; a fresco in the lunette appropriately depicts the Virgin and Child, St. John the Baptist and St. Celestine.

The central door was significantly reworked in the 15th century, decorated with blank niches arranged in two rows over a base composed of square panels carved with floral motifs.

The interior follows the standard plan of a nave and two side aisles, each one divided from it by a row of columns, from which arches support a tall wooden ceiling.

The church also contains a Crucifixion with St. Julian (who is specially venerated in L'Aquila), an early 16th-century frescoed niche of a Virgin with Child and Saints, and fourteen oversized 17th-century paintings by Karl Ruther, a monk of Gdańsk, representing episodes from the life of St. Celestine.