Serrapetrona

The whole of the municipal territory is the permitted area for Vernaccia di Serrapetrona, a naturally sparkling red wine made from a grape grown here since the Middle Ages, and the output stays small. The name says something else: a serra is a barrier, a fortified settlement of Lombard origin set to watch over the Chienti valley. In the age of the communes the village was disputed between Guelph Camerino and Ghibelline San Severino, until in 1240 the papal authorities entrusted it to Camerino, and with Camerino it stayed until the fall of the Da Varano in 1539.

In the Second World War Serrapetrona was one of the most active centres of the Resistance in the Marche: occupied by German troops in the summer of 1944, it came close to being razed as a suspected partisan base, and the retreating Germans blew up the bridges over the Cesolone; the next day the men of the Maiella brigade came in. Earthquakes have done the rest: the church of San Clemente, inside the castle, has stood abandoned since the tremor of 1799, and since 2018 Santa Maria di Piazza has gathered the works saved from the churches damaged in 2016.