Colonnella was born on a border and lived on it for eight centuries. The Norman advance halted at the Tronto, and that line, which placed the village inside the Kingdom of Sicily, would stay unchanged until 1861. Hence the trade: in a capitulary of Charles I of Anjou of 1282 Colonnella is designated a «Passo», a fixed customs post on the edge of the Kingdom. In 1385 Charles III sold it to the free comune of Ascoli for fourteen thousand gold ducats, and the Ascolani held it for a century and a half, until it returned to the Kingdom of Naples in 1529.
The village is the child of a destroyed city. Truentum, which Pliny describes, stood on the Colle della Civita and was wrecked during the Gothic War and then by the Lombards; the survivors rebuilt twice lower down, and in the end, to be safe, they levelled the highest of the surrounding hills and founded Colonnella there, keeping two parishes, one for each of the two populations. The name returns in the Catalogus baronum of the twelfth century, where two Norman barons take their surname from the fief: Guglielmo Colonnellus and his brother Giacomo. A piece of the comune, moreover, lies on the other bank: contrada Isola, named after an island that has vanished, was cut off in 1930 by works on the Tronto and today lies entirely on the Marche side.
No events match these filters.
📅 Every year, on 8 May; the Festa dei Manoppi on the second Sunday of July
Colonnella celebrates Saint Michael the Archangel on 8 May, the patronal feast. On the second Sunday of July, the Festa di Maria Santissima del Suffragio, or Festa dei Manoppi, is held, the most deeply felt by the population.
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 Colonnella, but an easy day trip away.
