Bisenti

There is a saying here that sounds like a declaration of independence: anyone not from the place is called «forastìre», and a man of Bisenti coming home from anywhere outside the comune says «So 'rvinùte a l'Itàlie», I have come back to Italy. The village stands high above the Fino valley, and the ambiguity that phrase stages is administrative as well: the province is Teramo, but by geography and by history this valley belongs to the territory of Penne, and until the province of Pescara came into being, in 1927, Bisenti lay in the district of Penne and was the head of a mandamento of its own. The name appears for the first time in 1085, when count Trasmondo ceded the county to the abbey of Montecassino; in later documents it wavers between Bisanto, Bisemptum and Biseptum.

Two accounts of the place's antiquity circulate, one learned and one legendary, and the village holds to both. The first says that Beregra, city of the Praetutii, stood here: the arguments are Ptolemy, who lists it on the border with the Vestini, and Frontinus, who ties its territory to that of Chieti; the archaeologist Felice Barnabei placed it instead at Montorio al Vomano, and the learned tradition of Bisenti judges that solution too hasty. The second account has it that Pontius Pilate was born down here, and unlike the similar legends of other towns it does not merely assert as much: it also explains how the family would have arrived up here, tracing it back to Ponzio Aquila, one of the conspirators of the Ides of March; a Roman ruin is still said to be the house of Pilate. Then there is something true and neglected: digging the foundations of the elementary school brought to light a Picene necropolis, with tiled tombs and an inscription attesting magistri, and no professional archaeologist has ever studied it.