Tione degli Abruzzi

In 1254 Tione took part with Goriano in the founding of L'Aquila and helped to build its quarter of San Giorgio: in the city walls, on the eastern side, there is still the gateway called Porta Tione, the one you came in by from the upper Aterno. The village took its present name only in 1928, when «degli Abruzzi» was added so as not to confuse it with Tione in Trentino. The hamlet of Santa Maria del Ponte arrived later still, in 1954: before that it belonged to Fontecchio.

At the foot of that hamlet stands the collegiate church of Santa Maria del Ponte, documented from the twelfth century and grown by additions over the centuries. Inside there remain a fourteenth-century altar frontal with the Agnus Dei, a Gothic inscription bearing the date 1333 and a medieval stoup with four lambs' heads around its pillar; the most precious pieces, among them the Beffi Triptych, have been taken for safety to the museum in L'Aquila. Of the cult of Saint Vincent it is told that in 1826, while the relics were coming from Rome, customs officers stopped the coffin at Carsoli to collect the toll: a storm broke out and put them to flight, and not a drop fell on the casket.