Washboard

 

 

We thought this was a bread board but it turns out to be a washboard used for hand washing.I might give it a try!

 

Its amazing the difference in the areas of bricks left un cleaned and oiled with the area on the right

 

 

Roman Villa - Manoppello

 

This Roman Villa was only excavated recently and is open to the public on Saturday and Sunday as to reach it you have to walk through the garden of the land owners. It is not a spectacular site compared to places like Villa Adriana in Tivoli but of great importance locally. The villa is built on a high plain close to the Abbey of Santa Maria Arabona which itself was built over the site of a Roman altar dedicated to the goddess Bona.

 

The goddess was worshiped in this area and the nearby valley is called Vallebona. 

There are some very informative notice boards describing the villa site and its importance as well as the history of the local area. The pictures in the middle of the notice board are of a stone head found in the walls of a private house in Manoppello and now kept in the museum in Chieti. The stone head is believed to be of the same age of the Capestrano Warrior.

Roman Remains? The Big Dig

1.

 

We broke up an apron of cement that had been laid down up to the wall of the kitchen as we wanted to allow the base of the wall to dry and under the cement we found an area of foundation that looked as though it was put down for the stone steps that would have led up to the main door of the church. clearing out soil around the foundations I dug up 5 separate pieces of a cement like rock which resembles the cement romans made from lime, quartz and sand.

 

As can be seen from the first picture there are also small bits of terracotta in the 'cement '

 

Whether this means that our house is build on a Roman site or just that some roman building materials were around locally when the original church was built ?

 

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2.

 

2 more pieces of cement material and a terracotta floor tile with some paint/plaster on surface.

Abruzzo Ceramic Dishes from Lanciano pottery

2 lovely pottery dishes we bought from a local antiques dealer in Pescara the dishes are around 100-200 years old but we have not been able to find out very much about the production of domestic pottery in Lanciano.