Pollutri

The history of Pollutri has a hole three centuries wide in it, and the reason is that two books were lost: the book of the reforms of the Terra, which recorded events from 1313 onwards, and that of the resolutions of the Università, which carried on from there. Between the fourteenth and the seventeenth century, therefore, almost nothing is known of the civil and religious life of the place. What the municipal archive did keep is the book of the lighting of the candles, together with the resolutions of the Università from 1729 on: the register of the candles was saved and those of the decisions were lost. Before the gap the documents are precise: on the twenty-eighth of August 1292 the Università, which was the centre of civil life, elected its supreme judges, and their three names are still known.

In 1015 Rainiero and his wife Engeltruda founded the monastery of San Barbato and endowed it with lands at Pollutri and at Ilice, a village that no longer exists; shortly afterwards their son gave the monastery to the monks of San Salvatore a Maiella, and an abbot had all its property written down. In 1344, after quarrels between the abbot and the bishop of Chieti, who collected the tithes, the bishop placed the monastery under the protection of the Holy See; from the sixteenth century it was held in commendam, and in 1788 its lands returned to the royal demesne. Of the monastery nothing is left: building expansion has covered the site tradition points to. But a little further down the slope the fountain of San Barbato has been found again, buried under a landslip. Towards the sea lies the wood of Don Venanzio, a nature reserve since 1999 and one of the last lowland woods of the Adriatic coast; at its edge a country house built on the ruins of the d'Avalos hunting lodge is now the visitor centre.