Gessopalena

Whatever they have called it, the name has always been the rock: in Roman times terrae gypsi, in the early Middle Ages Gisso de domo, then simply Gesso, gypsum. But there were two Gesso in the country of Chieti, and to tell them apart people said Gesso near Palena and Gesso near Vasto: the first became Gessopalena, the second is today's Gissi. The inhabitants, all the same, go on calling it just Gesso. The oldest part of the village stands on a gypsum spur above the valley of the Aventino, and from the eighteen hundreds onward it was gradually abandoned while lower down the new town took shape, laid out like an amphitheatre. The earthquakes played their part: the Maiella shook in 1706 and again in 1933, with heavy damage to the old centre.

In the sixteen hundreds the trades that counted here were the lawyer's and the notary's: between 1580 and 1873 Gessopalena produced twenty-four notaries, more than any other place in this half of Abruzzo except Chieti, Lanciano, Vasto and Atessa. In October 1943 the Germans occupied the village and installed themselves in the houses of the old families, in the Terravecchia quarter; the people went out into the fields taking their animals with them, and only women, old people and children stayed. At the end of November the garrison left, blowing up the road to Torricella. On the fourth of December some soldiers came back with a lorry and handed the podestà the order to evacuate the centre, shouting that Gessopalena was finished: the village would be mined. Marianna Salomone, who helped the refugees and those who had escaped the round-ups, was given the silver medal of civil merit in memory.