Carsoli

Carsoli sits at 616 meters in the Marsica, between the plain of the former Fucino lake and the valley of the Turano river, with Monte Velino and Monte Calvo both rising above 2,000 meters on its skyline. The modern town stands four kilometres northeast of Alba Fucens's neighbor Carsioli, the Roman colony founded between 302 and 298 BC as a stronghold to guard the road to Alba Fucens; walls and an aqueduct still stand at the locality of Muro Pertuso, surveyed in 1901 by the archaeologists Pfeiffer and Ashby.

The town's religious and military history sits closer to the modern centre than the Roman ruins do. The Castle of Colle Sant'Angelo, raised around the year 1000 by the Counts of the Marsi, stood until later wars, and ruins of its adjoining church remain near the site. Carsoli's autumn season runs on chestnut and polenta fairs with deep peasant roots, and the patron-saint feast of Santa Vittoria fills the streets with procession and stalls.

The town's layout traces its own history: a Roman garrison post relocated over centuries into a medieval and then modern settlement, so that walking from the modern centre outward means walking backward through the different periods that built it.