Up high, at one thousand two hundred and seventy metres, stand the ruins of Lecce Vecchio; the town where people live today is at seven hundred and forty. In between there is 13 January 1915: the Marsica earthquake almost entirely flattened the old settlement and the farmsteads around it, and in this comune alone it killed more than five hundred and thirty people. Before that, the inhabitants were scattered across eight places — the old town, the farmsteads of Ca' Marino, Sierri, Buccella and Macchia, the hamlets of Taroti and Vallemora, and the nucleus of Castelluccio, where the town hall stood. Afterwards everything was rebuilt further down the valley, and that is how the present town came up.
The name probably comes from the holm oak, the tree the Romans called ilex. But a local tradition, which has no archaeological or historical support, has the medieval settlement founded around the tenth century by people who came from Lycia, in Anatolia, and brings in support the patron saint Biagio, who is an eastern saint, and the preposition: Lecce nei Marsi and not dei Marsi, as though the founders had been strangers to the Marsi. The comune took the official name with that «nei» in 1863. Here, around 1420, according to the most accredited hypothesis, the painter Andrea De Litio was born; and the upper part of the territory, inside the national park, holds the ancient beech wood of Selva Moricento, which UNESCO in 2017 put among the old beech forests of Europe.
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📅 Every year, on the last Sunday of September
On the last Sunday of September Lecce nei Marsi, a municipality of 1,735 inhabitants in the province of L'Aquila, celebrates the patronal feast in honour of San Biagio (Saint Blaise).
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.
Outside Lecce nei Marsi, but an easy day trip away.
