Nocciano

The ancient name of this territory, between the Nora and the Cigno stream, was Fellonica and then Follonica; the people were Vestini and depended on Penne. When raiders came — brigands, Saracens, or the barbarian invasions — the population went up onto the hills, and one of those hills was perhaps shaped like a walnut, nux. From that the name became Noaanum, then Nouano, and finally Nocciano; and a walnut is what the comune carries on its coat of arms. In 1994 the remains of a Roman villa with mosaic floors came to light, tying the village to the ancient settlement that stood here and was called Follonica; in the fields around, weapons, amphorae and sarcophagi have turned up, and one of the sarcophagi is in the entrance hall of the castle.

Around the year 1000 the need arose for a watchtower, and the Torrione was built, which can still be seen; between the twelfth and the thirteenth century two wings were added to it, one on each side. In 1078 the place appears, as Nucciano, among the possessions of the abbey of San Clemente a Casauria. In 1670 the fief passed to Antonio Aliprandi, of an old family from Milan, and it was the Aliprandi who rebuilt the castle in the sixteen hundreds, turning it into a baronial palace with a loggia; the plan is an irregular ellipse, because it follows the medieval walls, and in the courtyard there is a small battlemented turret. Today the castle houses the museum of the arts of Abruzzo. Just outside the village stands the church of San Lorenzo, of the thirteenth century, with its Benedictine portal and monolithic architrave; inside, in the presbytery, there are fragments of fourteenth-century frescoes, and the single nave was given a side aisle only in 1930.