Goriano Sicoli

Goriano Sicoli sits in the eastern Marsica between L'Aquila and the Adriatic. Italian documents reference the village from 816, though local tradition claims a Roman foundation. Population is about 511 and falling.

The village is built on a slope, its stone houses climbing from the valley floor toward the ridge, with the piazza and its fountain as the fixed point where the streets converge and the town's social life gathers. Below and around it, the Subequana valley opens into agricultural land and pasture running between Sulmona and L'Aquila, with Sirente rising over the eastern Marsica. The village survives on its position rather than its size: the Terni-Sulmona railway runs through it, the A25 autostrada is twenty minutes away, and Pescara is within an hour. A place this small, sitting on a rail line and near a motorway between two larger cities, has stayed inhabited by being passed through rather than sought out, which is also how a printmaker's sketch and a Greek-Cretan agrarian myth both ended up attached to it.