Corropoli

The name is a hill: from the Latin Collis Ruppuli, the hill of Ripoli. And Ripoli is a name that travelled far, because it denotes the neolithic settlement that stood partly on this territory and that in 1871 was discovered by the village's own doctor, Concezio Rosa. The symbol of Corropoli, however, is its bell tower, the work of master Antonio da Lodi and his school between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries: a square shaft divided into three storeys, then an octagon crowned by a pyramid ringed with eight pinnacles. It belongs to a family of towers from the same hands, together with those of Teramo, Chieti, Atri, Campli and Città Sant'Angelo.

From 1393 to 1760 the town belonged to the Acquaviva, dukes of Atri, who had received it from king Ferrante as a reward for helping him put down a revolt of the people of Atri. Their castle had torture chambers, great cellars and stables for some forty horses; when the family's Abruzzese branch died out it was demolished, and the square that took its place is still called Pie' di Corte, at the foot of the court. The abbey of Santa Maria di Mejulano, already standing in 1018 and raised in 1616 to an abbey answering to no diocese, was suppressed under Napoleon and passed to the comune, which turned it into a school; during the Second World War it was used as an internment camp.