Campli has 7,276 inhabitants at the foot of the Monti della Laga, and is on the list of the most beautiful villages in Italy. The thing that really makes it special, though, lies outside the town, in the Campovalano district: a necropolis with six hundred tombs excavated in the nineteen-seventies, covering the whole span from the Bronze Age to the Roman conquest. In the largest tomb, beside the burial, the remains of a war chariot were found. And there is one detail that says more than many books: in the later burials, those of the Hellenistic age, the weapons disappear from the men's graves and in their place appear the implements of sport.
In 1764 an epidemic of typhus decimated the population. The people of Campli entrusted themselves to the Immaculate Conception, which has been the town's feast ever since, and in 1776 they built the Holy Staircase: twenty-eight steps of olive wood, set against the church of San Paolo, which penitents climb on their knees one by one. A century later, with the unification of Italy, Campli lost the bishop's see it had held for two hundred and eighteen years — it went to Atri — and on top of that took the sack of the Bourbon soldiers and of the Piedmontese, who in the war for the fortress of Civitella del Tronto burned its communal archive.
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📅 Every year, on 12 May; the last weekend of August brings the Porchetta Festival, since 1964
Campli celebrates Saint Pancras on 12 May. Since 1964, every last weekend of August, the Sagra della porchetta italica has been held, the first sagra of Abruzzo and one of the first organised in Italy, conceived by Fernando Aurini to promote the town.
Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Outside Campli, but an easy day trip away.
