Our family house

Many of our guests are surprised to read the many writings that decorate the Moorish portico of the main house. Among all, what is more surprising is an inscription of 1968, the day of the memorable discovery of proto-historic village of Madonna degli Angeli.
This is just one of many testimonies that inextricably bind this house and its land to its owners and their history.
Our family is linked to these places since the seventeenth century, when our ancestor Lorenzo de Pompeis decided to move in Torre de’ Passeri village from Castelli, a small village in the province of Teramo at the foot of Gran Sasso mountains. Here since the end of the fifteenth century, the founder of our family Orazio Pompei was dedicated to the job that was considered noble in the Renaissance: the art of majolica painting. The commissions were the most important royal and princely houses of Italy such as Aragona, the Orsini and the Farnese. for which the most important family of ceramists of the ’500 was that of “Pompei” (this was the original surname, then “de Pompeis”), in the village which still preserves its ancient building and furnace.

For years the family has followed my father and his friends in a tireless volunteer, which has allowed the discovery of important archaeological sites, such as the “Cave of Pigeons” in Bolognano (important shrine with Neolithic human sacrifice, just 5 minutes from the farm), the prehistoric findings in the “Giumentina Valley” at Roccamorice (30 min. – Majella) and many tens of recovery or real archaeological excavations (of course under the aegis of the Regional Superintendent or of the University of Pisa). Many of the finds are now showed in the “Museum of the Abruzzo People” (Museo delle Genti d’Abruzzo), where my father was the founder and staunch supporter in the difficult years that followed, dark and characterized by the abandonment of culture for other values ….
As for my ancestors me too, despite having chosen to graduate in sociology in Rome, I could not deny the “curiosity about the man” and the desire to preserve and pass on the passion and attraction for the history of my country, which today, together with my family, I try to convey to our guests. The brothers more directly, both museum directors in Pescara, are bringing the “witness” of family and even my wife Caterina, graduated in Archaeology, “chose” to do the graduation dissertation on the ancient fortified settlements of the Upper Valley of Pescara (ie, for a change, the area around us).