For three and a half centuries Pescina was a bishop's town: in 1580 the bishop of the Marsi moved the seat of the diocese here from the decaying cathedral of Santa Sabina, and in 1613 Clement VIII formally recognised the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie as a cathedral. In 1924, amid bitter controversy, the see was moved away again, to Avezzano. From the Giovenco valley came also Quintus Poppaedius Silo, leader of the Marsi and of the Italic peoples in the Social War against Rome: from him the writer Secondino Tranquilli took his pen name, Ignazio Silone.
On the thirteenth of January 1915 the Marsica earthquake razed Pescina to the ground. Of six thousand inhabitants about five thousand died under the rubble, and the very few survivors, most of them badly injured, were left without a home because every building had collapsed in on itself. The area was cut off: news of the disaster got out only in the late afternoon, and the rescuers who set out that evening arrived the following day, because landslides and rubble had made the roads impassable. The member of parliament for the Pescina constituency, Erminio Sipari, took to the chamber the protest for those victims who, had help come at once, would probably have been saved.
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📅 Every year, on 2 May; on 3 November pilgrimage to Colli di Monte Bove
Pescina celebrates Saint Berard of the Marsi on 2 May; on 3 November the faithful make a pilgrimage to his birthplace, Colli di Monte Bove.
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 Pescina, but an easy day trip away.
