Pescasseroli Culture

Pescasseroli has a culture built on animals, and the animals have changed.

Sheep

The old identity was pastoral: flocks, cheese, the long autumn walk south, and a dialect and calendar organised around departure and return. That economy has almost gone, but the families are the same families and the surnames on the war memorial are the surnames in the bar.

Living with bears

The newer identity is more complicated. Bears come into the valley, into orchards and occasionally into the village; they are protected, they are the reason visitors come, and they also eat people's fruit and livestock. The park compensates damage and funds electric fencing, and opinion in the village runs from real pride to real irritation, often in the same conversation.

Bears with names

Individual bears here are known, followed and argued about nationally. Amarena, a female who repeatedly walked through villages with her cubs, was shot dead by a resident in August 2023 and the killing became a national scandal; one of her cubs had already died on a road that January. Both stories are told here without much sentiment and with a good deal of anger.

Croce

The village claims him, though he spent most of his life in Naples, and the connection is taken seriously rather than commercially.

The park as employer

A large share of working-age people here are employed by the park, by the guiding companies, or in the hotels, which makes conservation an economic position as well as an ethical one.

Food

Mountain cooking: sheep's-milk cheeses, lamb, wild greens, and the heavy pasta of a place that was cold and poor. It is nobody's idea of refined and is very good.