The rock-hewn village of Gessopalena

Houses, churches, stables and oil mills cut straight into a mountain of gypsum. The only one of its kind in Italy. Razed to the ground on 4 December 1943.

The story

The history

On a map published in Venice in 1657 the place is marked as “Valle Sorda”. Perched on a rocky spur between Monte Alto and the Terlucci and Grilli hills, Gessopalena looks out over the countryside around it. The area is marked by a rock, La Morgia, around which the first settlements are thought to have grown up.

In the 11th century Gessopalena (Gisso de Domo) was the fief of a soldier from a family tied to the Norman counts of Loritello. It later passed under Angevin rule and then to Antonio Caldora, lord of Vasto. In the second half of the 15th century it came under the powerful Capua family, and remained so until the 18th century, when the Caracciolo took over. Through its past, Gessopalena was the most important cultural and trading centre in the valley.

Digging the rock

From the earliest times people have adapted the gypsum to their own needs: from watching over and defending the land to building houses, shelters, places of worship and places of work. The soft rock was dug, shaped and turned into dwellings, streets, alleys, passages, stairways and cellars. Gypsum proved a great source of wealth for the economy of Gessopalena.

The shape of the settlement

The street plan is set by three longitudinal axes of differing length, cut into the stone. The crest of the great gypsum mass is followed by the main route, via Castello, off which the side lanes branch like the teeth of a comb, forming the cross links and allowing people to climb or descend the steep slope by flights of steps and narrow passages.

What fate brought

Because the stone is fragile, the houses are threatened by crumbling and by rockfall: there have been many landslides, the worst in the 19th century. Earthquakes too pushed the inhabitants to move to the new districts down in the valley. To these natural events was added the German invasion of 1943, which destroyed every house.

The places of worship

Of the church of the Annunziata, abandoned in the 1930s, what can be seen today is the outline brought out by the cuts in the rock, the base of the entrance and the apse. The floor is of gypsum and is raised near the altar; for burial, a pit sunk into the stone and covered by a large slab was used.

The body of the church of Sant'Egidio had two aisles: the first, on the axis of the entrance, was divided into three bays with groin vaults; the second, on the left, had two bays and a central pier carrying four arches. Nearby stood a bell tower and the living quarters of the monks of the abbey.

The church of the Madonna del Rosario is perhaps later than 1560; made unsafe by the earthquake of 1933, it had a bell gable holding two tiers of openings with the bells. Today part of the bell gable remains, along with the base of the nave and some trace of the altar.

The church of Sant'Antonio, known as the Tozzi church, was built on a rock in the second half of the 19th century: after a landslide, retaining works were carried out and the Tozzi family, to mark the event, had a chapel built of a single room, lit by two semicircular windows. The outside front is faced with gypsum, with horizontal banding.

The working rooms

The oven is round and topped by a small brick dome.

The trappeto — the plant where olives were turned into oil — consists of a manger where the donkeys and horses that took turns driving the millstone rested; a block on which the lower stone sat, a hard stone base on which the millstone turned to crush the olives; a hearth sunk into the rock to warm the rooms; a cave in which to stack the olives; a small cistern that collected the pressings and separated water from oil; and a hollow in the floor for the counterweight of the beam press, the frantoio “a trabocco”.

The stable was also used for processing farm produce: in many of them are old wine presses, a way of pressing the marc known since the Italic period and still in use after the Second World War. Locally the wine press is still called a “vriscule”.

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