A 100-strong culture ministry team yesterday began a full inventory of churches, historic buildings and their contents in the Italian region of Abruzzo, after rescue workers called off their search for survivors of the devastating earthquake. A week after the quake struck, killing 294 and leaving thousands homeless, a culture ministry official said that at least 500 historic churches had been damaged or razed to the ground. "We are now shifting paintings, confessional booths and other objects from damaged churches to a depositary to start restoration work," said Anna Maria Reggiani, regional director for the ministry. Augusto Cicciotti, an architect working with the ministry team amid the collapsed buildings in L'Aquila, said restoration costs could reach 100m. Culture minister Sandro Bondi said restoration work would be "gigantic". Damaged churches in L'Aquila include Sant'Agostino, the dome of which collapsed onto a government office housing the city's historical archive. The removal of rare documents, including the 13th century charter granting city status to L'Aquila, began yesterday. Cicciotti cited the recovery of the 700 year old bones of Pope Celestine V from the damaged church of Santa Maria di Collemaggio as hugely important, while Reggiani said she hoped the city's churches could be restored as they were. What worries officials is that aftershocks continue to move north-east, beyond the Gran Sasso mountain near L'Aquila. "It is only now emerging that churches in towns like Penne on the other side of the mountain have been hit too," said one official. Sitting in the path of the tremors, buried 1,400 metres below the peak of Gran Sasso, is a government-run nuclear physics laboratory housing three 100m-long rooms hewn out the rock. An official said yesterday that technicians had felt the tremors but reported no damage.