Giuliano Teatino

On 18 March 1843 the ground beneath part of Giuliano gave way. There were no casualties, but the historic centre was effectively destroyed, and the subsidence did not stop there: in the twentieth century the ground sank further, and with the damage of the Second World War the old village was abandoned altogether. It was not demolished: it is still where it was, east of the modern centre, along via Piane and via Roma, with the houses set on either side of the main road. There one finds a chapel dedicated to San Rocco, a very plain plaque for the fallen of the Great War and another plaque recalling the sanctions over the war in Abyssinia; of the parish church, which collapsed, there remain ruins of walls with their arches. The new village was rebuilt after the war on a hill plain, away from the unstable ground, and stretches along the drove road that led from L'Aquila to Foggia.

The name, for its part, has changed shape four times, and almost always by mistake. The first mention is of about 1320, when the village was called Tullianum; according to the historian Anton Ludovico Antinori it was local pronunciation that turned it into Julianum, and the Roman ruins in the area suggest a holding of the gens Tullia and then of the gens Julia. Between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries a copying error made it Uigliano, while the countryside was called Giugliono: in 1630 the local archpriest signed himself Matteo archpriest of Giuglioano. Finally, in 1863, after unification, the comune of Giugliano in the province of Chieti took the name Giuliano Teatino, so as not to be confused with its Campanian namesake. As for the masters: in 1059 the village appears as a possession of the diocese of Chieti, then it passes to Fiordano di Rivello, to Bertrando di Poget by grant of Charles of Anjou, to the Orsini of Manoppello; in 1507 it was given as a reward to Giovanni di Leono along with an allowance of three hundred ducats a year, and in 1550 Francesco di Palma bought it for seven thousand ducats.