Venue

The venue

The convent of San Francesco is a national monument sinc 1902. The current church of San Francesco was completed in 1270. The construction of the cloister dates back to the early 17th century and the church was made Baroque in the 18th century. Closed following the Napoleonic edicts of 1809 and used for municipal services, in 1960 it was restored bringing it back to its medieval aspect. Since the sixteenth century it has housed the tomb of Blessed Tommaso da Celano, the first biographer of Francis of Assisi, who died around 1265 in the convent of San Giovanni in Barri in the neighboring Val de 'Varri.

Restored in 1960, it  has taken back its vocation of Franciscan centre and its starting sobriety. Very beautiful is the façade and the ancient portal; a masterpiece is  the Gothic rose window with orsiniani friezes. Inside is roomy and austere, and there are many bronzy and wooden works.

The Convent hosts the International Course on Drug Resistant Epilepsies every year since 2014.

Tagliacozzo

The placename means, according to the researchers, “cut in the rock” - from the Latin talus (cut) and cotium (rock) - to indicate the fissure that divides the mountain, in which the urban installation has developed. 

On the northern slopes of the Simbruini mountains, not away from the border of Lazio, this historical centre arises and whose walls of 1410 counted five doors and whose defence was submitted to a castle, in total ruin today.

Piazza Obelisco, is  one of the most harmonic squares of  Abruzzo, it is the pulsating centre of the village since from when it was called Piazza da’Piedi. It is surrounded of elegant buildings, some restructured and others in deterioration. Other things to see is an attractive double lancet windows, an open gallery  with arcs to all order and Renaissance windows. In the past it was surrounded by arcades, closed in 1810 ordered by Gioacchino Murat, king of Naples. To the centre he  brought the “pilozzo”, a seat of stone for insolvent debtors who were exhibited to the public pillory, that was replaced around 1825 by the fountain with the obelisk.

The Talia Theatre, an ex Benedictine  convent, used as a theatre in 1686, was renewed in 2002 after various events. It has a sober and elegant façade and three orders of stages in the inside, where more than 200 people can be entertained.

The Ducal building, the pearl of the artistic patrimony of Tagliacozzo, goes back to the first half of the 14th century, while the second constructive phase is connected to the second half of the following century under the commander Earl Roberto Orsini