ABOUT THIS EPISODE
Episode Title: An Emptying Village: Lettopalena, in the Province of Chieti, 1910–1920
Before German forces leveled Lettopalena in 1943, this small mountain village in the Abruzzo interior had already spent a generation quietly emptying itself — to a dying shepherding economy, to mass emigration to America, and to the everyday scarcity of subsistence life at 680 meters above sea level.
My grandmother was born in Lettopalena in September 1913. My grandfather was born in the same village seventeen months later. In this episode, I trace what the historical and demographic record actually tells us about the world they were born into — and then, carefully and transparently, I reconstruct a single imagined day in the life of my great-grandmother, Maria Anna Rossetti, who raised her children inside it.
This isn't the story of the ruins yet. It's the story of what came before them.
In this episode:
- Life in a medieval mountain village with no flat ground to farm
- The collapse of transhumance and the shepherding economy that once sustained the region
- Sdijuno, sagne stracciate, and what was actually on the table
- Nearly 600,000 Abruzzesi who emigrated to America between 1880–1920 — and what that did to villages like Lettopalena
- The women left to hold these communities together, first through emigration, then through war
- What's documented, and what I'm honestly still trying to confirm
Read the full companion article — with sources — plus more stories from Abruzzo, at www.AbruzzoMember.com.
If this project means something to you and you'd like to help support the research behind it, you can buy me a coffee at www.buyjoacoffee.com.
I'd love to hear from you if you have documented family history from Lettopalena, Palena, or the Sangro-Aventino valley — especially anything touching daily life, sharecropping, or emigration records.
Abruzzo Unscripted — the people, places, and heritage of Abruzzo, unscripted.
