Morino

The Liri river cuts a long corridor south from Avezzano along the Lazio border, and Morino sits partway down it, the main village with its hamlets strung along the slopes above. Rendinara, the highest of these, sits on the flank of Monte Pizzo Deta, closer to the mountain pastures than to the valley floor where the parish church and the rest of the settlement lie. The commune is a member of the Città del Castagno network, and the roscette chestnuts, peeled and boiled with wild fennel, come from the same slopes that carry the reserve's beech and chestnut cover upward toward the peak. The valley's low villages, its high hamlet, and its chestnut woods all answer to the same terrain: a river corridor walled in by mountains that push settlement upward in places and leave the water, higher still, to do the rest.