CASTIGLIONE A CASAURIA. Town celebrates abbey, but much damage still scars the Abruzzo region A little more than two years after an earthquake destroyed broad swaths of the central Italian region of Abruzzo, this normally quiet community of about 900 people was a beehive of activity. Under bright, sunny April skies, residents, old and young, gathered for the awaited reopening of the medieval Abbey of San Clemente, a beloved local landmark that was shattered by the earthquake. It struck on April 6, 2009, killed more than 300 people and left tens of thousands homeless. Many were thrilled that after two years of celebrating Mass in tents, they would return to more decorous surroundings. Other reasons were more personal. "This used to be our favorite place to study," Domenico Cantamaglia, a 19year-old in his last year of high school, said of the manicured lawn surrounding the church. "And in summer, it's one of the freshest places to hang out." Vincenza Di Benedetto, a local woman, said she hoped that the formerly brisk pace in wedding ceremonies would soon pick up. "Let's face it," she said. "If it weren't for the abbey, Castiglione would hardly be on the map. It's the town's calling card. Couples would come from all over, at least they used to." The recovered splendor of the abbey, made possible by matching donations from the World Monuments Fund and a local charitable foundation, "helps to cancel the images of tumbled stones and wounded landscape that we thought would be difficult to heal," said Gianni Letta, who was born in Abruzzo and has been very involved in monitoring the reconstruction as under secretary to Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. Now, two years later, Mr. Letta said at the gathering, "this abbey is more beautiful than when I was a boy." But the celebratory mood at the reopening muted by the untimely death of the chief restorer just a few days earlier did not quite quell the debate that has raged around the reconstruction of the Abruzzo's historic buildings, monuments and palazzos. The historic center of the region's capital, L'Aquila, the biggest city damaged in the quake, and one of Italy's most storied, with its Renaissance and Baroque churches and palazzos, remains a ghost of its former self. Of the 45 buildings that Mr. Berlusconi had presented shortly after the quake as a "wedding registry" of wounded monuments that he hoped foreign governments would adopt and restore, most remain without benefactors. Only 13 have been adopted, the majority by Italian banks and their foundations. Only a handful of foreign governments France, Germany, Russia and Kazakhstan have dipped into their pockets to help out the region's monuments. The abbey of San Clemente is the first and so far only monument from the list of 45 to be fully restored, leading some Italian media outlets to pronounce that the appeal for foreign funds and solidarity through the "wedding registry" had been a resounding disappointment. The U.S. government did not contribute, even though hopes ran high after President Barack Obama toured the rubble-strewn center of L'Aquila during the Group of 8 summit meeting in July 2009, which was hastily moved to this region from an island off Sardinia in solidarity with the traumatized population. "We're all disappointed that we didn't get the support of Obama, who seemed full of promises," said the deputy culture minister, Francesco Maria Giro, who recently recalled Mr. Obama's tour of the earthquake ruins "in his shirtsleeves." Though the U.S. government made no definite promises regarding the adoption of any monuments, "I have to admit, we are a little embittered," Mr. Giro said. Gianni Chiodi, president of the region and the commissioner in charge of the reconstruction, noted that several American organizations have "done other things" in Abruzzo, including assisting students. New York City is hosting the so-called Madonna of Pietranico, a 16th-century sculpture that was badly damaged in the earthquake. It is on display until June at the Italian American Museum, which raised 110,000 toward its restoration. The domestic dispute over the earthquake reconstruction has been fierce, most intensely between local administrations and the federal government, each accusing the other of falling short of their responsibilities and duties. Bureaucratic entanglements and scandals "Let's face it. If it weren't for the abbey, Castiglione would hardly be on the map. It's the town's calling card." over some contracts have slowed down restorations and heated up the debate. By contrast, work on the Romanesque abbey founded in the 9th century and rebuilt in the 12th in Romanesque style was relatively smooth sailing. The restoration consisted principally of shoring up the structure and then mending a collapsed roof part, a tympanum, which left a large gaping hole in the main nave and damaged a sculpted pulpit and large stone candlestick used for the Paschal candle. The entire structure was also reinforced to better withstand future seismic activity. Less than three months after the earthquake, the World Monuments Fund had found money for the restoration of the abbey after Bertrand du Vignaud, president of W.M.F. Europe visited the site "and fell under the spell of the place," he said. The Fund's financing of about 1 million was matched by the Fondazione Pescarabruzzo, a local aid organization that Mr. du Vignaud found through Google. They proved to be an "ideal partner," he said. But Mr. du Vignaud remains baffled by the country's bureaucratic burdens. "I could spend an entire lifetime trying to understand how things work in Italy," he said. Complications over the way things work in Italy may account, in part, for reconstruction delays, especially in the historic center of L'Aquila, which Marisa Dalai Emiliani, president of the Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli Association, a cultural research institute, recently called "a dead city." It took months to begin clearing rubble from L'Aquila's historic center, much of which remains off-limits to the public, and most buildings are still encased in scaffolding. The federal government argues that much of what has been done has been of a preparatory nature. Moreover, the government takes pride in having rapidly provided temporary housing throughout the region after the shock, so that the homeless could live in relative comfort during what everyone expected would be a lengthy reconstruction. Of the 4.6 billion that the government set aside for emergency aid and reconstruction, about 2 billion has been spent and 2.5 billion is available to those municipal governments that have completed master plans. "It isn't true that we haven't done anything," Mr. Letta, the under secretary, said at the opening. "It isn't true that we are behind schedule. There's no magic wand that can make things go faster. But once we're finished, the center of L'Aquila, like this abbey, will be more beautiful and stronger than before."