Monteodorisio

The village carries a man's name. The first records of the county go back to 993, when the fief passed to Oderisio, count of the Marsi, and in the Catalogus baronum the place appears as Mons Odorisius. In 1348 it was granted to the Camponeschi of L'Aquila, who held it with the title of county, and in the fifteenth century it passed to the marquises d'Avalos. Their castle still stands at the top of the village: born as a Norman strongpoint, it keeps its curtain walls and three of its four towers, and the western one has machicolations and a carved frieze. Today it looks more like a fortified gentry house than a fortress, and holds a museum.

Of two convents little is left, and the way they vanished says something: of the Franciscan convent, older than 1334, the church was pulled down to build the town hall, while of the convent of San Bernardino, of 1442, only a chapel survives. At the edge of the village, instead, stands the sanctuary of the Madonna delle Grazie, built after events held to be miraculous which began in 1886. And there is a bread here worth a monument: lu purciullate, a dark round loaf of about a kilo that opens like a flower in the middle, blessed in the parish church, carried in procession and then sold to the faithful. The recipe is kept secret, and those who try never manage to reproduce the taste.