Castelvecchio Subequo

The village sits on a rocky spur of Monte Putano, in the Subequana valley, on the footprint of Roman Superaequum, a municipal town of the Paeligni recorded by Pliny. Under the Lombards it was known as Onuffolo, and the Latin name returned under the Normans. The upper spur carries the ruined medieval castle that gave the place its present name, old castle, while the lower town grew up around the Franciscan convent after Francis of Assisi passed through the valley between 1216 and 1222 and was given a small church by the Counts of Celano.

Pope Celestine V stayed here in 1294, and the village has come to be called the little Assisi of Abruzzo. Between the Roman ruins below ground, the rock-cut catacombs among the oldest in the region, the castle above the roofs, and the convent that still draws the town's identity around it, the place reads as a settlement built in layers, each era leaving its marker rather than replacing what came before.