At 1,421 metres, Capracotta is one of the highest villages in the Apennines, and around here they call it the village of blizzards. On 5 March 2015 they measured 256 centimetres of snow in eighteen hours: Guinness registered a world record, while standard readings speak of 90-120 centimetres, enough in any case to bury a doorway.
The name is said to come from capra cocta, goat meat the shepherds dried in the sun. At the end of the nineteenth century Neapolitan families came up to spend the winter in its hotels, so much so that in a film Alberto Sordi calls it the little Cortina d'Ampezzo of the Abruzzi; then the retreating Germans burned and dynamited almost all of it, and in the 1950s it was rebuilt. There are 950 residents.
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📅 Every year, on 20 January
Capracotta celebrates Saint Sebastian on 20 January, with an altar dedicated to him in the church of Santa Maria Assunta; the town, known as the «town of blizzards» for snowfalls that can exceed a metre, was almost entirely destroyed by retreating German troops in the Second World War.
Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Outside Capracotta, but an easy day trip away.
