Rosello

The village grew up around an abbey. The Benedictines founded it in the early Middle Ages and called it San Giovanni in Verde, after the Rio Verde that runs beside it; only ruins are left today along the road to Agnone, but in 1068 it counted for enough that the lord of Bagnolo made it a gift of lands. Of the fief what is chiefly remembered is a Caracciolo, Giulio, brother of a saint, who had a whole hamlet built and gave it his own name: Giuliopoli. Above the village spreads the fir wood, a stand of silver fir with very old trees.

The church of San Nicola stands on top of the rock above the old town, and you can see it was made smaller: after the earthquake of 1703 it was rebuilt without respecting the old plan, and the jutting, out-of-true buttresses mark where it used to end. Then came the war, with the Gustav Line running through here and the Germans destroying the village in November 1943. By the nineteen-seventies people had moved down to the valley and a new parish church was built there; but in 2012 the three bells cast at Agnone were carried back up, into the old church.