Cepagatti’s walls tell its story

I knew a few things about Cepagatti (PE).

There’s a market there on Sundays. It’s a pretty big one that spreads all through the town.

The buildings to look out for are the castle, Torre Alex and the church of Saints Lucia and Rocco.

There are several festivals through the year and an important one is coming up. Between the 15^th and 17^th August Cepagatti celebrates its patron Saints Rocco and Lucia which includes a medieval re-enactment called Palio dei Saraceni.

Whenever I see palio I think there must be a  competition of sorts between districts, but I’ve no real idea (and I’ve tried to find out) what the Palio dei Saraceni consists of.

I was there at the end of May and it was for three reasons:

• The Sunday Market
• The paintings on the walls that tell the story of Cepagatti
• And the usual reason, I hadn’t explored the town before

The market is possibly the biggest I’ve been to so far in Abruzzo. It might be due to how it’s spread out, but I thought I saw more stalls there than I did in Atri or Sulmona. All the typical goods were on sale along with live rabbits, geese, chicks and even tiny turtles.

I’m not usually a true active participant at markets. I prefer to have a coffee or an aperitivo and watch the world shop to its heart’s content. This time I had one very important item to buy and once I’d got it, I was done. So I left P to rummage and compare and I went on to look at the rest of the town.

I knew there were paintings on the walls of some of the buildings and I wanted to have a good look at them. I hadn’t seen any around the market area but just as I turned a corner I saw this piece of graffiti:

All ospite diciamo:

Benvenuto a Cepagatti…il nostro paese è tuo…

Abbiamo raccontato il passato per capire il presente e guardare ad un future sempre migliore!

I think that’s one of the nicest greetings a guest in a strange town could get. It’s certainly better than something containing the word ultra.

Initially I thought there were only a few scenes depicted but I was wrong. Away from the market in quieter part of the town (only 100m away really) the story of Cepagatti unfolds.

The paintings are about 25 years old now and are showing signs of weathering. But as I walked around looking at key events in the history of the town I thought this is a great way to tell a story. Place it in full view, for everyone to see, everyday of the year.

In 1985, Mira Cancelli and her students created these images on the walls of Cepagatti and wrote the text that goes with them, including the greeting I discovered initially.

In 2010 I was delighted to have a chance to see and enjoy them.

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