Celano has 10,828 inhabitants looking straight down on the plain of the Fucino, which was a lake until the nineteenth century. In 1223 Frederick II took the county away from Thomas of Celano, destroyed the town that stood on the San Vittorino hill and deported its inhabitants to southern Italy, to Sicily and to Malta. Four years later, perhaps through the intercession of pope Honorius III, the people of Celano were allowed back and rebuilt the town lower down, on the San Flaviano hill: and for the whole of the emperor's life they called it Cesarea, until his death in 1250.
On the hill stands the Piccolomini castle, begun by the Berardi when they got the county back. From Celano came Thomas, the first biographer of Saint Francis, who told how the saint had miraculously healed a knight who had put him up in his palace here. Under the Aragonese the royal drove road that went down from Celano to Foggia was regulated: transhumance was for centuries the mainstay of the economy. In 1591 Costanza Piccolomini sold the county to Camilla Peretti, sister of pope Sixtus V.
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📅 Every year, from 24 to 26 August; on Good Friday the procession of the seven confraternities
Celano celebrates its patrons, the martyr saints Simplicius, Constantius and Victorian, from 24 to 26 August. On Good Friday, instead, the procession of the seven confraternities is held, with the Sorrowful Mothers, Veronicas, angels and saints singing polyphonic chants.
Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
