Frunti

Frunti or Fronto was an ancient territorial and administrative district whose name is still remembered, south-west of Teramo (of which it is a frazione); in the late Middle Ages its size and borders changed several times.

The ruins lie between the hamlets of Valle San Giovanni and Faieto, in the comune of Teramo.

According to surviving documents, such as those described by Niccola Palma, and to surveys made for the Documenti dell'Abruzzo Teramano (DAT), the few ruins usually linked to this old name actually belong to the destroyed village of Solignano, whose church was dedicated to Santa Maria. It stood on top of the hill, on the ancient road that led to the temple of Pagliaroli, and in the 14th century it depended jointly on the pieve of Pagliaroli and on the Abbey of San Giovanni in Pergulis. The name Frunti, from the high and steep look of the hill, as often happened with Abruzzo comuni, did not necessarily mean one place but the whole territory. The community had the privilege of the Forum at least from 1328.

Known at least from the mid-13th century, it gave its name to the feudal "di Fronto" family, who held it as a fief for much of the 1300s and for short periods also held shares of the neighbouring castle of Fornarolo.

In this territory, known from the 12th century also as Terra Teoderadesca, which for a time also included the comuni or castra of Scalellis and Rocca di Padula (later joined to the Montagna di Roseto area and today part of the comune of Cortino), stood the ancient Benedictine abbey of San Giovanni in Pergulis, recorded as a property of the Church of Teramo in a bull of Pope Anastasius IV in 1153.

Text: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0 · translated from Italian