In the night between 4 and 5 December 1943 the Germans wiped out Gessopalena which was on the Gustav Line. Most of the houses were blown out one by one, before the desperate eyes of the citizens against which the nazis carried out raids and other forms of violence. The memory of that terrible night still pervades the medieval borough, which has been the heart of Gessopalena for many centuries, and now, carefully restored also after the 1933 earthquake, has become an open-air museum.

The medieval borough is set on the top of a chalky spur with its houses, artisans workshops, olive mills and wineries dug in the rocks, which is formed by crystals glittering at the sun: that’s why the settlement was called “Preta lucente” (= shiny rock). A paved road climbs to the top of the spur where you can enjoy an enchanting view in front of Maiella, from there, you can also see the Benedictine medieval church of Sant’Egidio, Chiesa di Sant’Antonio di Padova as well as simple houses backed against each other.

Walking along those desert streets which still bear visible and melancholic injuries of the war, you feel like living in a memory museum of a hard working peasant civilization that was active even during the Resistance, ready to give their life to free their land from the nazifascist enemies. That is the motivation by which Gessopalena was awarded the “Gold medal for civil value”.

The ruins of the ancient borough are a living archaeologic proof that turns Gessopalena in a touching setting for the representation of the Passion of Jesus each Holy Wednesday. The citizens themselves are not merely spectators or actors but they are the protagonists of a paraliturgical representation of the Christian sorrow inspired by the sufferings of the war which still echo on the “Shiny Stone”.

[Credits | Text: Ottavio Di Renzo De Laurentis | Translation: Mirella Rapa | Voice and music: Studio Qreate | Photo: Laura Di Biase]