Terelle

The village grew up around a castle, and the castle was built by Lando, count of Aquino, while he was at war with Montecassino: this is around 1117, and the place was called the wood of Tyrella, from which the name comes. Of that castle the keep remains, and around it the medieval village still stands, still lived in. During the Second World War people from the neighbouring villages came here for shelter, because Terelle seemed out of the way; then the bombing came and wrecked the centre.

Just outside the houses there is an ancient chestnut grove which the village counts as its pride: the oldest tree is eight hundred years old and twelve metres round. Above the houses the selva begins, a beech wood crossed by paths, and there are the wells people once drew water from and the snow pit: a natural hollow that was filled with snow in winter and then covered with branches and straw, and that gave ice through the whole summer. From the Casermette refuge you climb to the top of Monte Cairo.