Balsorano

The coat of arms of Balsorano tells a mistaken etymology: an outstretched arm gripping ears of wheat, for «Balzo del Grano», the crag of grain. The name almost certainly comes from something else, from the medieval «Vallis Soranae», the valley bordering Sora, and the old documents indeed write Valsoranum and Balzaranum. In the eleventh century the Benedictine monastery of San Nicola di Valle Sorana was a possession of Montecassino important enough to appear on the bronze door abbot Desiderius had made in 1065, and in 1089 the court of the counts of the Marsi settled here.

The earthquake of 1915 destroyed the old village on the slopes of monte Cornacchia, which was left almost entirely abandoned: the new one was rebuilt down in the valley. Five years earlier the people of the old village had risen in what is remembered as the revolution of Balsorano, against the abuses of the powerful. And on the first of May 1944 two young partisans, the brothers Mario and Bruno Durante, were captured and made to disappear: they refused to reveal the existence of a third brother, a partisan too, and the help the village was giving to Allied prisoners escaped from the camp at Avezzano. They were killed after a month of torture and their bodies were never found; both were awarded the gold medal for civil merit.