Archi

Archi stands on a rocky spur that looks over two valleys at once, the Sangro and the Aventino, which is why they call it the terrace over the Sangro: from up here the eye follows the river down to its mouth on the Adriatic. People have lived on this ridge for a very long time. At Fonte Tasca stood the most important settlement of the final Bronze Age on the whole Adriatic side of Abruzzo, and its defensive works were still standing in the Hellenistic age; the site was identified in 1974 by two private citizens, Fulvio and Elena Di Cristoforo, and excavated between 1975 and 1988. In the Middle Ages Archi formed with Casoli and Roccascalegna a defensive triangle that barred the passage between the eastern Maiella and the Sangro valley. About the name, on the other hand, little is known: from the documents of 1308 down to the eighteenth century it changes several times, from Terra Arcanum to Arci and Archi, and the explanation the source offers — the pleasantness of the place — explains very little.

In 1656 the Turks came up the Sangro and sacked the town. Between 1940 and 1943 Archi was one of the comuni of Abruzzo designated by the fascist authorities as a place of civil internment for the foreign Jewish refugees who were in Italy. After the eighth of September 1943 the Germans occupied the town and installed their garrison in the medieval castle; and yet all six of the former internees managed to escape capture and to reach the areas of southern Italy that had already been liberated. When Montgomery's Eighth Army arrived on the Sangro the Germans abandoned the town, mining the castle and destroying most of it. Below the old centre, meanwhile, Piane d'Archi has grown a great deal, being easier to reach from the sea and from the valley road.