The name is gypsum: Gypsum, from the chalk hill the village stands on, as at Gessopalena. That rock is at once the material of the place and its hollowness: the quarries have left caves — the cave of the brigands, of the crystal, of the wolf, of the zita — reckoned among the largest in Abruzzo, and many of the houses are still coated with the plaster got from those same hills. On the coat of arms there are three letters, GMR, and their meaning is not settled: either Gypsum Municipium Regium, Gissi royal town, or Gypsum Montis de' Risii, Gissi of Monteodorisio.
The first historical mention is of 1039, with a gastald named Deodato, and a papal bull of 1208 speaks of a castrum: inside the castle were the governor's dwelling, the armoury and the stables, but it fell down before 1742 and a house now stands in its place. Gissi belonged to the abbey of Santo Stefano in Rivomare at Casalbordino, then it was a county held by the abbot of Montecassino, then Charles of Anjou gave it to a Courtenay; in the fifteenth century it was the fief of Antonio Caldora, son of the condottiero Jacopo, and from the middle of the seventeenth of the d'Avalos, marquises of Vasto. In 1896 Antonio De Nino found on Colle Rovelizio an Italic settlement with pit graves and graves roofed with tiles. In the nineteen-fifties a landslide carried away part of the Quarto da Piedi, houses and the little church of the Madonna delle Grazie with it.
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📅 Every year, on 20 May, festivities from 18 May involving Saint Nicholas of Bari
Gissi celebrates Saint Bernardine of Siena on 20 May, in the church dedicated to him, with festivities that from 18 May also involve Saint Nicholas of Bari. In the Santa Lucia pine grove stands a small church that is the destination of a procession in her honor.
Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Outside Gissi, but an easy day trip away.
