Sulmona

Sulmo was one of the principal towns of the Paeligni, an Italic people of the central Apennines, but it appears in history only with the Roman conquest. Hannibal ravaged its territory in 211 BC without attacking the town; after the civil war between Sulla and Marius it seems to have been confiscated and its land given to Sulla's soldiers. In 49 BC, garrisoned against Julius Caesar, its citizens opened the gates to his lieutenant Mark Antony. The poet Ovid was born here in 43 BC and celebrated its clear streams and its cold winters, and the initials of his line "Sulmo mihi patria est" — Sulmo is my homeland — appear on the town's coat of arms.

Christianity is traditionally dated here to the 3rd century, and Pamphilus, bishop of Valva from 682, is the patron saint, buried in the cathedral that bears his name. Under the Normans Sulmona became a free commune, and Frederick II built its aqueduct, made it the capital of a large province and gave it a court and a fair, which it lost to the Angevins. It still grew: new walls went up in the 14th century, when the town struck its own coins, and a paper industry began in the 16th.

In 1706 an earthquake nearly destroyed the town, which was rebuilt in Baroque style around the surviving medieval buildings. From the late 19th century it became a railway junction between Rome and the Adriatic, which made it a target of Allied bombing in 1943. Its Campo 78 held up to 3,000 British and Commonwealth prisoners; when the guards left in September 1943, hundreds escaped into the hills, many helped by the local resistance network of Mario Scocco.

Ovid is everywhere in Sulmona: his bronze statue stands in Piazza XX Settembre, the main street is named after him, and his motto appeared on the coins the town minted in the Middle Ages. The other figure who looms over the town is Pietro da Morrone, the hermit who lived in a cell on the mountain above, founded the great abbey at its foot and in 1294 became Pope Celestine V; his hermitage is still visited.

The old town is divided into sestieri, districts that once corresponded to the gates and had to guard and maintain the walls, and each still has its own coat of arms. Together with the outer borghi they compete each summer in the Giostra Cavalleresca, a jousting tournament held twice a year in the Renaissance, abandoned in 1656 after a plague and revived in 1995. At Easter the Madonna che Scappa, the running Madonna, draws crowds to Piazza Garibaldi, and the Camerata Musicale Sulmonese organises concerts from classical music and opera to jazz.

Local crafts go beyond confetti. Weavers make rugs, tapestries and blankets with geometric and plant patterns, and goldsmiths keep up an old tradition. Daily life is sociable and unhurried: the passeggiata along Corso Ovidio in the early evening, and again after dinner, is one of the strongest in the region, and much of the town turns out for it at weekends and on holidays.

About 21,500 people live in the municipality. The town sits in the middle of the Valle Peligna between the Vella stream and the Gizio river, with the Morrone and Majella mountains rising directly to the east, and most residents live either in the historic centre or in the newer streets that spread across the valley floor towards the station and the industrial areas.

The best-known local product is confetti, made by the long-established Pelino family firm and other makers. The railway remains important: the station is the junction of lines to Rome, Pescara, Terni and Isernia, and has its own locomotive depot. The Maiella National Park has an operational office in the town, and walkers come for the trails on the Morrone as well as for the historic centre.

Twice a week, on Wednesdays and Saturdays, the market fills Piazza Garibaldi with produce, meat and household goods. Evenings belong to the cafés and the Corso. Football has a long local history, but the old town club, Pro Sulmona, has been disbanded since its last season in 2015–16.

Sulmona is the home of confetti, sugar-coated almonds given to friends and relatives at weddings and other celebrations. Their manufacture here is documented with certainty from 1783, and the craft was later dominated by the Pelino family factory, whose old works now hold a museum of confetti making. The shops of Corso Ovidio pile the sweets in every colour, and local artisans wire them into flowers and other decorations; some are made with chocolate or other nuts instead of almonds.

Other sweets mark the calendar. Handmade nougat, scarponi and stuffed ceci are Christmas treats, fiadoni, sweet pastries made with pecorino cheese, are eaten at Easter, and the cassata sulmonese — layers of sponge cake, creams and croccante, a crunchy nut brittle — is considered the queen of the town's desserts.

Savoury food is that of inland Abruzzo. Arrosticini, chunks of mutton or lamb on skewers grilled over a long, narrow brazier called a furnacella, come from the shepherding tradition of the mountains, and maccheroni alla chitarra, an egg pasta with a square cross-section, is a regional speciality. The red wine on most tables is Montepulciano d'Abruzzo, a dry wine with soft tannins usually drunk young; the land around Sulmo was already known in Roman times for grain and vines. The Wednesday and Saturday markets bring vegetables, meat, honey and garlic from the farms of the valley.