Pettorano sul Gizio

The village is medieval: first a Norman watchtower of the twelfth century, then Charles I of Anjou, who in the twelve hundreds fortified the place and enlarged the castle, then the Caldora and the Cantelmo of Popoli. The Maiella earthquake of 1706 flattened it, and what is seen today is the eighteenth-century rebuilding, so well preserved that Pettorano is among the most beautiful villages of Italy. But the oldest thing here comes from much further off: the village keeps the only fragment in Greek of Diocletian's edictum de pretiis rerum venalium ever found in the West — the edict by which the emperor fixed the maximum price of everything. Where the name comes from is less certain: on the arms there is a pectoralis, the Roman breastplate, and the name may come from that; the arms stand on top of the monumental fountain of 1897 in piazza Umberto I, above two bronze statues of Neptune and Amphitrite. The second half of the name, on the other hand, is a matter of paperwork: before 1860 the comune now called Pettoranello del Molise was called Pettorano too.

The town gates were six, and the ones still standing tell what they were for. The Porta del Mulino, austere and without decoration, controlled the water mills below the village, and it was the way up to the castle. The Porta San Nicola carries a fresco of 1656 with Saint Margaret holding the town in her left hand and showing a cross with the other. And then there is Porta Cencio, the last survivor, to the east, which has three names: Cencio from the little square it opens on to, which is shaped like a belt; Manaresca because it looks towards the sea; and Porta Reale since 1832, the year Ferdinand II of Bourbon passed beneath it during his first visit to Abruzzo — he stayed at palazzo Vitto Massei, and ever since that gate has been royal. Near the castle stands the Locanda, the old resting place where the horses were changed on the Napoleonic road.