Colledara

Until the beginning of the twentieth century this comune was called Castiglione della Valle, and Colledara was one of its hamlets. On the thirtieth of December 1909 a royal decree moved the seat of the municipality here, and the reasons given were practical: the central position, the number of inhabitants, the presence of the post office, the doctor, the pharmacy, the notary and even the bank. But a provincial councillor, speaking in the council at Teramo that same year, added another one, and it is the reason that makes this village unusual: a book. In 1907 the poet Fedele Romani had published with the Florentine house Bemporad a volume of memories entitled simply Colledara; parts of it had already appeared in one of the most refined literary reviews of the time, and had been a real case, read well beyond Abruzzo. In 1928 a second royal decree completed the operation: the comune stopped being called Castiglione della Valle and took the name Colledara. A book had first made the hamlet the chief town, and then given its own title to the whole comune.

The reasoning is preserved: the words of councillor Tito Candelori are in the acts of the provincial council of Teramo, which is the least literary place in the world — a publishing success entered into the record as an administrative argument. Romani was serialising his chapters in Il Marzocco, the review run by the Orvieto brothers, who gave him room for his second book too, published after his death with a title that tells his whole life: Da Colledara a Firenze. In the village stands the church of San Paolo, built in the sixteenth century and restored more than once, one of the places described at length in the book; the other church is San Michele Arcangelo. The comune lies under the Gran Sasso: a stretch of the mountain's long bridle path crosses it, and it is served by a junction of the motorway that passes the Apennines in a tunnel.