Vallesaccarda

In the spring of 37 before Christ Horace passed this way. He was going to Brindisi on a diplomatic mission, in the company of Maecenas and Virgil, and he told of stopping at an inn to get his breath back after the long journey: that inn has been identified with the Taverna delle Noci, the Walnut Tavern, near Trivicum, which today lies in the territory of Vallesaccarda. The name of the place has stayed where it was. All this area, in ancient times, was made of scattered vici which together formed a pagus, a sort of farming district, and the Roman finds turn up at the localities of Mattine, Civita, Monte Mauro and precisely Taverna delle Noci: that is, along the old roads, the Aurelia Aeclanensis and the branch that linked it to the Royal Drove Road and up to the via Traiana.

The village's name, instead, comes from a dangerous crossing. Around the sixteenth century the place was called Vade Saccarda: vadum, the ford, and Saccarda from the Saccardo de Vico family who lived there. The road to Trevico too has its name: they called it Lu Custón for its terrible steepness, and it can be seen in a tondo painted by a Spanish painter around the seventeenth century, recovered during the studies for the comune's fiftieth anniversary. For Vallesaccarda has been a comune only a short time: it followed the fortunes of Trevico, on which it depended until 1958. The earthquake of 1930 took away its old church, but the new carriage road to San Sossio and Vallata pulled it out of its isolation. In the kitchen, the thing it has all to itself — together with Trevico — are the trilli, a home-made pasta.