Villalfonsina

On how Villalfonsina was born there are two versions, and neither is proved. Some texts say that the village was founded in the sixteenth century by a feudal lord named Alfonso, and that from his name came the name of the village. Other sources tell instead that it was founded by the Schiavoni, arrived by makeshift boats at the mouth of the Osento, fleeing the Balkan peninsula before the Turkish advance, in search of more hospitable land. At that time the area was a fief of the d'Avalos of Vasto, who had a palace here surrounded by the cottages of their tenants, and the newcomers ended up in their service. A trace of that story is said to remain on the bell tower of the parish church, which has an onion-shaped roof, typical of the other shore of the Adriatic; and it would not be an isolated case, because Slav settlements between the Chieti country and lower Molise were numerous — at Cupello, close by, among others.

The old village is laid out like a comb on both sides of the ridge, with the main axis — corso Adriatico — splitting, at the height of the church of Santa Maria della Neve, into via del Pozzo and via del Forno. The houses are single-family and often joined to one another by covered passages, small courtyards and outside stairs, which here they call brancatelli, with inscriptions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; there is a rusticated portal of 1849 and there are the palaces of the Cinosi, Salerni, Gizzi and Di Risio families, modernised in the nineteenth century in the neoclassical taste. The parish church is first mentioned in 1742 in the d'Avalos valuations. In largo della Fontana there is a kiosk fountain on a polygonal plan, of brick, which also served as a washhouse. Outside the village stands villa Amalia, built by the Adami at the end of the sixteenth century: it was sold in 1909, together with the knightly title and half the hill, to Umberto Del Re, who named it after his wife Amalia. Del Re died in a collision between the car driven by his chauffeur and a train of the Sangritana line, and today the frieze of the villa gives its name to a wine of the cooperative winery of Casalbordino.