Frattura Vecchia

Come and visit it! It is a ghost town that leaves a mark. Maybe you come towards the late afternoon of a summer day as it happened to me. Visiting this town faded at sunset was unforgettable. Stop here for dinner in the moonlight with bread and tomato, in utter solitude was fantastic.

The village of Scanno has only one hamlet, Frattura, populated by only 48 residents and located at an altitude of 1200 meters on the slope of Mount Genzana which, with its over 2100 meters, dominates the underlying Sagittario valley. But the group of houses we see today is recent, built in the 1930s as a testimony of the tragedy that was the Marsica earthquake of 1915. In that year, the devastation caused by this seismic event of unprecedented power was added to the disaster of the war - it reached the 7th degree of the Richter scale, the 11th (out of 12) of the Mercalli scale - which had its epicenter in the basin of Avezzano. There were over 30,000 dead, the city of Avezzano had exterminated 90% of its population. The small medieval village of Frattura - born on the site of an ancient landslide that had created the lake of Scanno millennia earlier and which amplified the telluric event - was literally canceled, while Scanno, the capital, suffered much less damage. Of the 350 residents surveyed, 120 died: but a large part of the male population of working age had at that time emigrated to Puglia to transhumate the flocks or overseas, to America. There were perhaps 200 inhabitants left in the village, almost all women and children, and it was they who perished under the rubble of the village. Today we walked the road that from the new village of Frattura leads to the ruins of the old one and then to the Immaculate Conception pass above, a transit point for flocks and shepherds. As always, a wonderful landscape, but with a background of inextinguishable sadness.

Splendid semi-abandoned village, destroyed by an earthquake and more reconstructed, very suggestive, it can be reached via a dirt road from a left turn as soon as you enter a new fracture, directed over the lake of scanno ...

Getting there on foot from the cemetery of Frattura is only 2 km away but you will enjoy the silence of nature and your thoughts! A magnificent place that will make you think! Small village destroyed by the earthquake of 1915 now deserted and silent, nature is slowly regaining its space! Go early in the morning!

Among the many mountain villages destroyed by the earthquake, this one has been partially rebuilt. Thus imagination and fantasy fly among the ruins and new houses imagining the life and passions of the people who lived there. A suggestive place, to be visited absolutely.

Reached by e-bike (impossible to reach by car if not off-road) rented from the rental at Lake Scanno. The uninhabited village is wonderful. Between the two "Frattura" (the new and the old) is the cemetery. The fountains are very suggestive and entering a completely uninhabited and very quiet town is something beautiful. Absolutely recommended for those who have the opportunity and are located near Scanno. It is advisable to take a drone with you if you have the possibility, to shoot from different and much more suggestive angles. I will definitely be back.

Enchanted place. From wikipedia: Frattura is the only hamlet in the Abruzzo town of Scanno, in the province of L'Aquila. Inhabited by 63 residents [1], the village is located at 1260 m a.s.l. on the western slopes of the Genzana mountain range. Due to the Avezzano earthquake of 1915, the ancient village was almost completely destroyed; the new center was rebuilt slightly further south, so much so that the two villages are called "Old Fracture" and "New Fracture". Territory Edit The two villages of Frattura are located between 1260 and 1307 m a.s.l. of the mountainous territory of the upper Sagittario valley, in the municipality of Scanno. Surrounded by the peaks of the Genzana mountains (2170 m a.s.l.), Rognone (2089 m a.s.l.), Serra Leardi (1932 m a.s.l.) and Rava (1859 m a.s.l.), dominate the underlying lake of Scanno. The territory is characterized by the presence of some sources and springs such as Avanelli, Giordano, Leardi, Malvascione and Pietra Libertina and is surrounded by the protected areas of the guided nature reserve Monte Genzana and Alto Gizio and the national park of Abruzzo, Lazio and Molise [ 2]. Frattura owes its poleonym to the landslide phenomenon generated in prehistoric times on Mount Rava, the Genzana mountain group that blocked the underlying river Tasso thus forming Lake Scanno between 12,820 and 3,000 years ago [3] [4] [5]. Starting from the end of the 9th century and the beginning of the 10th century, the construction of the castle of Frattura began, founded by the Di Sangro counts and sold in 1091 by Oderisio di Oderisio to the monastery of Montecassino [6]. According to some scholars, the village ancient would be identifiable with the "castle of the Numi" mentioned in some historical documents of the seventeenth century [7]. The Marsica earthquake of 1915, with its epicenter near Avezzano, caused extensive destruction in Frattura Vecchia on 13 January of that year. The reasons for this can be attributed to the geomorphological characteristics of the site: the old town is located near the detachment niche of the Pleistocene landslide which caused the damming of the river below and the formation of the lake. In fact, during an earthquake, the presence of incoherent material such as that deposited by a landslide leads to amplify the seismic wave, causing greater damage to buildings than those placed on a rocky ground. In fact, the neighboring countries, according to what is reported by the macroseismic catalogs of the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology, suffered minor damage [8]. At the time of the earthquake, there were about 350 residents surveyed; 120 were the victims, almost the entire population actually present, mostly women and children as the men transhumed with their flocks in Puglia or had emigrated to the United States of America. The ruins of the original nucleus remain of the ancient inhabited area [9]. However, some houses have been renovated, the village is reached by water and electricity supplies and has been partially developed for tourism purposes [10] [11]. The center, called Frattura Nuova, was rebuilt in the Fascist era between 1932 and 1936 on another spur of Mount Rava, slightly further south [9]. On the recommendation of Benito Mussolini, the first three buildings were built as an act of gratitude to a fellow soldier originally from Frattura Vecchia who saved his life in the First World War [12].