Shopping Abruzzo: artigianato e ceramiche di pregio

In Castelli, it is a continuous succession of shops and artisan workshops. Legend has it that it was the Etruscans who spread the art of pottery, helped by the clayey badlands that surround the village at the foot of Monte Camicia. History, however, speaks of a community of Benedictine monks who, faithful to the motto “ora et labora,” began about a thousand years ago to work the clay, passing on its secrets to the population. Since then, the village has lived on the art of ceramics, reaching, in the 1600s and 1700s, stellar heights, with schools such as those of the Grue, Gentile, or Cappelletti, whose pieces also adorned the courts of Europe. To realize this, just take a look at the splendid ceiling of the little church of San Donato, defined by Carlo Levi as the <>, or at the pieces kept in the Ceramic Museum, just above the village, within the walls of the Convent of the Minor Observants. To see the artisans at work, just drop by Simonetti Ceramiche, at the Artisan Village, where wonderful polychrome collections of Renaissance tradition stand out, or at Ivana Di Claudio’s workshop, at the Bivio di Villa Rossi.