Corfinio

Corfinio is a village of fewer than a thousand people on the floor of the Peligna valley, surrounded by the Maiella to the east and the Morrone to the north. Underneath it lies Corfinium, the city the Italic socii chose in 91 BC as the capital of their revolt against Rome. They renamed it Italica, struck silver coins with the legend ITALIA, built a new forum, and were defeated within four years.

The Romans demoted the place; the bishopric of Valva eventually replaced it in the Middle Ages. What remains above ground is the Basilica Valvense di San Pelino, an eleventh-century Romanesque church just outside the present village, with a separate twelfth-century oratory of Sant'Alessandro built on the cemetery where Pelino was martyred in the fourth century. The archaeological museum holds the coins and the inscriptions. Corfinio sits inside the Maiella National Park.