Montelapiano

It is the smallest comune in southern Italy, and together with Carapelle Calvisio, at the other end of the region, the least populous in Abruzzo. Before this village there was another one on the ridge above the Sangro valley, Montevecchio, and the legend says it was abandoned because of an invasion of ants; more probably it was the earthquake of 1456, which dried up the springs.

In the nineteenth century, once feudalism was over, the former princes and barons became townsmen and took the best land: the peasants emigrated and the village emptied. In the same century the old castle disappears from the records, and in its place stands the Caracciolo palace, facing the church. Of the church of Santa Croce, outside the walls, nothing at all remains: when the nursery school was built, walls and bones came back to the surface, and they are probably its own.