Pizzoferrato

Before the year one thousand there was no single village but three settlements whose names began with Pitius, that is Pizzo: Pitius Superior on the crag that still overhangs the houses, Pitius Medium at Rocca Fonte Maggiore, Pitius Inferior known as Roccarsa. How they became one is told in two ways: a Neapolitan archive speaks of an unknown catastrophe that destroyed them, and of the survivors gathering lower down; the other version has two brothers survive, Rocco and Lorenzo, one staying here and the other at Gamberale. In support of the second a fact is offered: Pizzoferrato has a church of San Rocco, and Gamberale has San Lorenzo as its patron.

Because brigandage made the countryside unsafe, for a long time there were no farmsteads here: only once it was stamped out did people move outside the village, and Collalto, Castiglione and Turchi were born. On the crag stands the church of the Madonna del Girone, the oldest building in the village, its apse added in the 13th century: partisans hid inside it and, once discovered, threw themselves from the crag rather than be taken, and the comune carries the bronze medal for military valour for the war of liberation. Later Pizzoferrato tried to follow the winter tourism of nearby Roccaraso with the Valle del Sole holiday village, which never really came into service: the water and sewer pipes and the ski lift itself were missing.