Overview
You will feel right at home in Casalanguida.
In the Alto Vastese, at the foot of the Montagnola between the Osento and Sinello rivers, if you walk around the village, the smell of good and old-fashioned things immediately jumps out at you.
It will be the scent of the “maccheroni alla chitarra” sauce, coming from a window, that will remind you of your childhood dishes. It will be the alleys, weaving one inside the other, that will renew an indelible plot of the national past. It will be the notes of a saxophone, evoking the most important moments of the historic local band – founded in 1849 – so similar to the instants you experienced when you were a student.
Community sensations that you feel you have already experienced, perhaps in another country, in another age, in another life.
Full of these visions, you feel like you are an integral part of the village in the province of Chieti (whose name means borderland). You become one with its history that begins in the 12th century, as a fiefdom, and with its 15th-century towers: one, the Cauli Tower, incorporated into the palace of the Barons Cauli di Policorno and the other in the Procaccini palace in Via Umberto I. Inside, you will find various stone fragments, including corbels, jambs, architraves, window sills and gargoyles.
Visit the Church of Santa Maria Maddalena, in Piazza Chiesa Madre, mentioned in the tithes of 1324-25, later enlarged in the 16th century and restored twice, in 1832 and 1843. The moulded stone portal – dating from the 16th century – and the three-nave interior – with a polychrome wooden organ above the entrance, in the chancel space – are beautiful.
Take a look at the neoclassical San Rocco Fountain, too. It dates back to the 19th century. You will find it at the junction of Via Straripola and Via Nuova.
Your Proustian search for lost flavours and smells stops in front of the typical local dishes, each with its own identity and memory. Memories of the sausages, “capicolli” and “soppressate” belong to a part of peasant Italy that guarded the family “treasure” – the pig – like a relic. Above all, Ventricina is the typical salami of the area, whose name derives from an ancient preservation technique used by the peasants of Abruzzo, who used to put the “noble” parts of the pig cut into pieces inside its “belly”, with red pepper and spices.
Other tastes not to be missed include pecorino cheese and “arrosticini”, the latter, are an “icon” of the region.
And if you are in the area in July, take part in the “Festa della trebbiatura” (lit. Threshing festival), with the re-enactment of the “Tresca”, the threshing of wheat with horses.
Another moment that may stir your emotions and memories.
Those of an Italy that no longer exists.
What else to see:
- The fortified village of Policorvo