Atessa


Atessa is an municipality in the province of Chieti, Abruzzo, south-eastern Italy. It is part of the Val di Sangro mountain community. It is the largest municipality in the province by extension and eighth by population.

Geography

The town is located in the lower valley of the Sangro river. Its area, with its 11,003 hectares, is the largest in the province and includes a small part decentralized from the rest of the territory, south of the hamlet of Tornareccio. It includes a series of promontories that reach the vast floodplain of the Sangro.
The village of Atessa winds on top of a relief from the crescent-shaped plant, isolated on the surrounding countryside, whose highest point is 473 meters, at the Villa Comunale.
The watercourses that run through the municipal territory are numerous, mostly tributaries of the main rivers, the Sangro to the west and the Osento to the east.
The subsoil consists of one of the last ridges where there are ancient stratified sandy deposits, visible in the numerous outcrops of the escarpments, with an ocher-yellow color. These sediments, evidence of the permanence of the coastline in this place and the following regression of the sea between the end of the Pliocene and the beginning of the Quaternary, rest on clayey soils, the result of the sedimentation in the open sea of terrigenous materials. The large hills are thus constituted, on which are found the majority of the districts, connected by a dense network of secondary roads to the most important ones of the valley bottom.

History

The origins of Atessa according to some sources date back to the fifth century AD, after the fall of the Western Roman Empire.
In the Middle Ages it was a fief of various lords including: the Courtenay or Cortinaccio, Philip I of Flanders, the Maramonte, the Counts of Monteodorisio, king Ferdinand I of Naples and the Colonna.
After the abolishment of feudalism in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, the land was in misery. There was a brief recovery, but a subsequent cholera epidemic that hit the area between 1816 and 1817 deprived it of any improvement.

Main sights

The city preserves the historical center in 17th-century, late Renaissance style, with few remains of the ancient medieval walls in the urban gates of San Michele, San Giuseppe, San Nicola and Santa Margherita. The city is divided into two sections: the first is the oldest, represented by the bulk of the Cathedral of San Leucio, and at its end, towards the plain of the Sangro, from the fortified church of Santa Croce; while the second section is crossed by the Corso Vittorio Emanuele, and passes through the Arch 'Ndriano, from Piazza Garibaldi to the hill of San Cristoforo, from the votive column raised on the top.

Religious buildings

Church of San Domenico - church with an unfinished Baroque façade, with rich frescoed interior. There are scenes of the Apostles.

Other sights