Ovindoli

Before there were telephones, the Marsica was watched by sight. The circular tower of Santa Jona, built from the thirteenth century by the Berardi counts, lords of Celano, was placed in optical alignment with the others: with the towers of Venere and Sperone, with the castle of Celano and, towards the plateau of the Rocche, with the military structures of San Potito, Ovindoli and Rovere. Each tower had to see the next, and one signal was enough to alarm the whole basin of the Fucino. Part of the same system was the castle of Ovindoli, whose ruins remain in the upper part of the village: it controlled the passage between the Marsica and the basin of L'Aquila. Of the medieval town there also remain the Mutiati gate, with its pointed arch, and the double-entrance Urbica gate. The Marsica earthquake of 1915 badly damaged all this, and the old centre was recovered little by little during the twentieth century.

The more recent layers are just as singular. The Casale delle Rocche, in an isolated mountain area, was built for the Torlonia in 1939; during the Second World War the Germans made it an outpost and called it «Eagle's Nest»; in 1967 it was bought by Opus Dei, which administered it for years. Winter tourism, on the other hand, began after the Great War but became a serious business only in 1959, when the resort was organised under the name Valturvema; the ski lifts came into operation in the 1961-62 season, and presiding over the company that developed the area was an American from the United States Embassy in Rome. Since 1994 the resort has been called Monte Magnola. On the coat of arms, granted in 1995, is Saint Sebastian pierced by arrows, copied from the image in the land register of 1759.