Civitaluparella

The name is made of two pieces. Civitas was the word given in the Middle Ages to places where a Roman settlement had existed, however small; Luparella comes from the late Latin luparius, the wolf hunter. And indeed the village stands on a limestone spur on the flank of the Monti Lupari, above the Sangro valley. People lived here long before that: at Coste della Taverna a boulder was found carved with a human figure, geometric shapes, two small crosses and a circle marked with an X, from somewhere between the Neolithic and the age of metals. The first document naming the village is from 1115, a bull of pope Paschal II.

The castle at the top of the village belonged to the Caldora: Giacomo Caldora had it strengthened, and under his son Antonio, busy fighting the king of Naples, it fell into decay; today a few walls of rough stone and pebbles are left. In 1964 Civitaluparella had to give up part of its territory to Fallo, which had been one of its hamlets and became a municipality of its own that year. In the old primary school there is the Museo del Medio Sangro: the tools of the old trades set out in a ring around a cart, a mineral collection, and a small bronze bell of 1694 said to have been found among the ruins of Santa Maria del Perdono.