As she slowly turns the pages of a leather-bound album, revealing black and white pictures of her wedding in L'Aquila's basilica, Angela Ciano can barely hold back the tears.

Unlike some L'Aquila residents, she did not lose her husband, child or home in the earthquake that devastated the city in April.

But the realisation that the places and structures that formed the fabric of her life are gone forever is still painful.

"What I felt was a sense of great loss," she tells me as she describes walking through L'Aquila in the hours immediately following the quake.

"I have that feeling with me still, today, of having lost not only the city with its monuments - which we can reconstruct - but the loss of my life, everyday life - meeting your friends in the cafe on the square or underneath the arches, the shops we used to have, my old offices."

Stained city

Her memories of that walk through the ruined city have stained her image of the city she still loves.

"I had taken my camera with me but I just couldn't bear to take any photos," she remembers.

One of the most dramatically damaged buildings was the church where Angela was married 12 years ago, the Basilica Santa Maria di Collemaggio, which dates originally from the 13th Century.

With its pink and white facade, it was a focal point for many of the city's believers, who prayed by the tomb of the monk who founded the church and became pope.

It is now being rebuilt again - as it has been several times during its history - but the buzz of cranes and the sound of hammering metal from outside cannot prepare you for the sight that awaits within.

At one end of the nave a vast portion of the roof now lies as rubble on the floor. Arches that curved up towards the heavens have fallen, revealing the bricks behind, and the sky where workers dangle from cranes.

A stained glass window catches my eye - it seems open but in reality it has been partially sheered from its frame by the force of the quake.

Metal scaffolding has been erected along the entire length of the nave as men in hard hats work at shoring up pillars.

"When these things happen - we mustn't ask why did God want this?" says the rector, Don Nunzio, also in a hard hat, as well as his usual clerical garb.

"They are natural events. We have to have the faith to say - it has been destroyed, we will rebuild it," he says.

Tour of destruction

No mass has been said in the basilica since the quake. Don Nunzio has been visiting his parishioners in their temporary homes - many in the tent cities that are scattered in fields around L'Aquila.

"For many, their faith will be reinforced, but for others it may fade," he admits. "They'll wonder how God could let all this destruction happen? They'll ask - couldn't he save us?"

He bristles at the suggestion that it makes no sense to rebuild a city that, located on a faultline, remains continually at risk of destruction.

"You can't cancel out history, history stays in the heart and in the mind. To abandon history, not rebuild it means losing our identity. We want to rebuild and leave the sign of what happened - even if that was painful."