Buonalbergo

The name means what it says: bonus in Latin and haripergo in Lombard, which was first a shelter for soldiers and then a place of shelter in general. The village too, so the story goes, began that way, around the year one thousand: refugees from three villages the barbarians had destroyed were taken in by the monks of a church built on the ruins of a pagan temple. In the first half of that century the papers name a Gerardo de Bonne Herberg, that is of Buonalbergo, first Norman lord of the county of Ariano: they called him the Great Count, and he was the first to call Robert the Norman by the nickname Guiscard, and to give him his own aunt, Alberada, as a wife.

Down in the territory runs the via Traiana, and on it stands the ponte delle Chianche, the best preserved Roman bridge on the whole route: it had six arches, of which three are the original ones and one has been rebuilt. Near it the fourteenth milestone of the road was found, and it now stands in the courtyard of the town hall. Behind the village rises Monte Chiodo, where there was a pre-Roman settlement and then another, Montegiove, founded in the sixth century and destroyed in 1122; at its foot passes the drove road that runs from Pescasseroli to Candela, and there is a tavern for travellers to stop at. The village too has moved: it used to be down in the valley, and after a landslide it was rebuilt up here around 1525. It is still made of three parts: the old quarter where the offices are, the Casale where the church is, and the commercial zone.