The coat of arms bears a rampant bear, and it is an invented explanation. When comuni took shape, between the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, they gave themselves a simple account of their own name with no historical footing: here the bear seemed plausible, because the nearby Maiella has always had plenty of them, and the chain Orsinia, Orsonia, Orsogna was built on a legendary family of bears. In the eighteenth century local scholars proposed instead a lord named Orso Orsini. The documents say something duller: in 1074 the place is Orsonia, and the name most probably comes from an old district in the Valle del Moro.
In the chapel of the Madonna del Rifugio the village kept very old statutes written in the vernacular: they were stolen after the earthquake of 1881, and ended up in the library of the Senate. Between 1940 and 1943 Orsogna was one of the Abruzzo comuni used for the civil internment of foreign Jewish refugees, and the internees were twenty-six, one of the largest groups in the province of Chieti; after the eighth of September four former internees, arrested in the village, were killed at San Pietro Ari on the eleventh of January 1944, while the others managed to hide or to reach the already liberated south. Every year, on the Tuesday after Easter and on the evening of Ferragosto, the village stages the Talami, living biblical tableaux.
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📅 Every year, on 6 December; the Festa dei Talami at Ferragosto and Easter Tuesday
Orsogna celebrates Saint Nicholas of Bari on 6 December, in the church dedicated to him. It is renowned for the Festa dei Talami, living biblical tableaux, renewed every year on Easter Tuesday and the evening of Ferragosto.
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Outside Orsogna, but an easy day trip away.
