Ofena

Ofena and Capestrano are called the oven of Abruzzo: facing south, in a dry basin where no more than five hundred millimetres of rain fall in a year, in summer they reach temperatures one does not expect in the mountains. The village sits on a rocky hill at the mouth of the Forca di Penne pass, where the flocks went through.

The ancient name was Aufinum, and in 475 a letter of pope Simplicius already names one of its bishops, Gaudentius: the diocese later vanished and today survives as a titular see. In 1579 Ofena passed, with the marquisate of Capestrano, into the hands of grand duke Francesco I de' Medici, and the Medici held it until 1743: for two centuries this piece of Abruzzo was governed from Florence.