Filetto

The name almost certainly has nothing to do with meat: it comes from the Greek of the Byzantines, filacterion, the fortification set to bar an important passage, and from the same root come Filattiera in Lunigiana and Filettino in Ciociaria. In the village, though, another story is told: a farmer is said to have found a medieval object engraved «Filius Electus», the chosen son of the De Lecto family, the one that held the castle of Orsogna, and from that the name would come. The first settlement stood on the Colle dei Saraceni — so called after the raids of the tenth century — where stretches of wall in opus reticulatum remain. In 1283 the diocese of Chieti names in a deed the abbey of Santa Maria di Viano, today the Madonna del Soccorso: it still stands in its original form, and legend has it built by the Templars.

In the middle of the fourteenth century the plague swept the place clean: only five families survived, and their surnames are still known — De Vincentis, Di Scipio, Di Tullio, Micozzi. The arms, for their part, show a silver hand issuing from the point of the shield, with the motto FIDELITAS LIBERTAS, and some will have it that this is the hand of Mucius Scaevola. Between the nineteenth and the twentieth century the village emptied towards the United States and South America; then came the war, because the Gustav line ran through here. There remain the bombardments of 1944 and an episode that has only recently begun to be named again, thanks to research and publications: the massacre of 5 December 1943 at Piano Sale. The church of San Giacomo, too badly damaged, was pulled down in the fifties to make room for the new Santa Maria ad Nives; today the village is best known for its summer chilli pepper festival.