Located at the foot of Monte Camicia, in the middle of  National Park of Gran Sasso , the country of Castelli is a village surrounded by farming and clay gullies. 

The birth of Castelli ceramics is mainly due to these natural features, the presence of clay quarries, forests for wood streams and the deposits of silica, already in Etruscan times.

But it was above all the presence of Benedictine monks took office in the territory since the fifteenth century which developed the tradition of pottery. These monks then taught the villagers to use clay to make pottery.

In the village you can visit the church of St. John the Baptist, who keeps an altarpiece ceramic made in 1647 by Frederick Grue.

Along the village there are many shops where you can still produce and sell many items of this valuable material.

Just above the village is the Monastery of the Friars Minor, which today houses the Ceramics Museum, which houses some interesting objects in the school families Grue, Gentile and Cappelletti.

This church was built to replace an earlier chapel rural risen toward the end of the fifteenth century, which was adorned with ceiling

brick tiled. The original bricks, representing male and female figures, animals and coats of arms are now preserved in the Museum of Ceramics.

 

The church as it stands today was rebuilt in the early 1600's and is also adorned with brick tiled ceiling, painted in the style of.

The ceiling of this new church, painted between 1615 and 1617, is unique both in Abruzzo in the rest of Italy.