Rivisondoli

Rivisondoli sits on the flank of Monte Calvario, looking down at the plateau that runs north toward Roccaraso. The town was first recorded in 724 in a diploma of Grimoald II, Duke of Benevento, and grew in the 12th century along the Via degli Abruzzi, the military and trade route across the central Apennines. It was once known for its weapons production. The 1792 fire destroyed most of the village, and the opening of the Sulmona-Isernia railway in the 19th century turned it toward tourism rather than trade. The Italian royal family kept a residence here in 1913.

Rivisondoli and Roccaraso face each other across the Cinque Miglia plateau, close enough that their ski slopes were joined into one domain and their names are now said together. The older village, rebuilt twice, climbs one flank of the mountain while the plateau below stays open and treeless, the same ground that once slowed traders and caravans on the route through the Apennines. What began as a stop on a military road became, after fire and war remade the town twice, a place oriented instead toward winter visitors and a single night in January.