Cugnoli

The oldest news of Cugnoli is of 1111, when the lords of the castle, the brothers Oderisio and Pagano, took part in a convention at the abbey of San Clemente a Casauria to redraw the shape of the area after the Norman conquest. In 1173 the place was counted: thirty-six families; and it had to supply king William the Norman with three soldiers and six servants. That was the measure of the village. Of the castle only the front part is left, and around the first settlement the medieval walls can still be seen.

Until a few years ago an old custom was kept up here: a little cross of wax was fixed to the architrave that survives over the castle's entrance door, as a good omen for the safekeeping of the castle itself — because the good fortune of the whole village was identified with it. In the church of Santo Stefano, which is of the thirteenth century and was remade in the sixteen hundreds, there is a stone pulpit that an abbot named Rainaldus had built, entrusting it to the magister Nicodemo of Guardiagrele, the same man who made the ambo of Moscufo. In the first chapel stands a wooden Annunciation, gilded and painted: the Virgin and the archangel Gabriel.