Step into a Fairytale: Explore Calascio’s Medieval Charm and Majestic Castle
Calascio is a great place to visit. At 1,520 meters above sea level, La Torre Castle is the highest point in the Apennines. From there, you can see one of the main entrances to the Gran Sasso and Monti della Laga National Parks.
Calascio is a small town that almost gets lost in the huge collection of pearls in the province of L’Aquila. However, it shines like a jewel that comes out of the golden tide of Abruzzo-made beauty.
Only 100 people live in this cute village, which is between the Gran Sasso and Monti della Laga National Parks. It is 1,210 meters above sea level, which is not high enough to be considered a mountain.
Well, it is a bit hilly, but this place is in a very diverse area with prairies, pastures, forests, and pleasant groves that can cover the first slope of the Gran Sasso and the Piano Buto, an airy, quiet valley from which you can see the Majella and Sirente, the two biggest mountains on the horizon.
Calascio lives in its shadow, at 1,200 meters above sea level, a Lilliputian reality of only 140 irreducible inhabitants born as a watchtower with the name of Rocca Calascio, a feud that developed starting from the year 1000 in the area now included in the province of L’Aquila in Abruzzo, where antiquity lived on sheep farming, breeding, and the production of Carapese wool from flocks that in the 1400s amounted to nearly 90,000 heads. One of Abruzzo’s most interesting towns.
The upper village and the Rocca
Costanza Piccolomini, who owned the domains at the time, gave the barony and the marquisate to Francesco Maria de’ Medici, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, before everything was taken over by the Bourbons in 1743.
Calascio was in danger of being completely empty because of earthquakes and other things that caused people to move away. In 1957, it looked like a ghost town, and it has been hard to bring it back to life in the last few years, but it now has about a hundred people living there.
Its decline, revival, and constant struggle to stay alive make the area a very interesting place for tourists to visit.
It was a great place to film “Ladyhawke,” a fairytale movie directed by Richard Donner in 1985. Some scenes took place inside the walls of Rocca Calascio’s “Tower,” which is on a ridge and made of white stone and squared ashlars.
You can see right away the central ramp, which replaced the old wooden drawbridge, and the four corner towers that surround the central keep. These towers have been fixed up over the years and tourists can visit them for free.
In any case, the castle got its revenge, and after it was fixed up at the end of the 1900s, the area around it was completely re-evaluated to the point where it was used in many national and international films as a real-life set.
The Rocca is a stop on the medieval route because it is the highest castle in Italy (1,500 meters above sea level) and one of the highest in Europe. It is also the darling of directors who want to make historical, fantasy, and adventure movies, but the village doesn’t want to be outdone and can show off monuments that are certainly attractive, especially from a tourist’s point of view.
A little lower is the upper village of Calascio, which is made up of a single mass. The wind is the only thing you can hear in the ruins, which have been fixed up to make them more appealing to big tours.
Calascio Attractions
On the other hand, only a few people live in the lower part of the town. These people are from Abruzzo and love living there. The Church of Santa Maria della Pietà is close by. It is a small temple that was built in 1596. It has an octagonal shape and an eight-segmented dome. The painting of the miraculous Virgin next to a sculpture of an armed Saint Michael is the pinnacle of its art.
The Church of Santa Maria delle Grazie (or Church of San Francesco) was built in 1594. It is a complex that includes a seventeenth-century ciborium, a carved wooden candelabrum, a terracotta sculpture of the Madonna and Child, and a painting of Francis of Assisi by Giulio Cesare Badeschini, who also painted a Francis of Assisi in the parish church of San Nicola.
Sant’Antonio Abate (17th century), San Leonardo (13th century), and San Carlo (14th century) are the last churches in the sacred cycle. The noble conception includes Palazzo Taranta (the town hall, built in the 17th century), Casa Piccolomini (built in the 15th century), Palazzo Frasca (built in the 17th century), and the tower house La Palmara (built between the 15th and 19th centuries).
Calascio and its suitcase of wonders, like the old medieval village, the Rocca, the valley of Navelli and Castelvecchio Calvisio, and the best places to raise sheep and make great wine in Abruzzo, all have a taste of the Middle Ages in their most magical forms.
The food sings poetry like a siren, luring in sailors, or in this case gourmets, who are looking for unique, local, simple dishes. Said, done, and here is the delicious lentil soup served with bits of fried bread and a drizzle of olive oil. Alternatively, a special type of fresh pasta called “volarella” makes a good lunch, as does the local sausage or the local lamb in a dish called “Chiaranese lamb with cheese and eggs.”
How to get to Calascio
By car, from L’Aquila, take the SS 17 toward Pescara. At Castelnuovo, turn toward Castelvecchio Calvisio, and then follow the signs for the town. The train station is in L’Aquila, and you can take Arpa buses to the town from there. Pescara airport is the closest, at 61 km from Calascio.
