Polia

Polia stretches between two valleys constituting the Reschia River basin. It consists of four hamlets: Cellia, with a greater craft tradition; Poliolo, a mainly agricultural center; Menniti, rebuilt after the 1783 earthquake, with a central square and adjacent buildings on a regular urban grid; and Trecroci, once the most populated, clustered on the ridge of an impassable hill, sloping downward into the valley. Relevant also for the troglodytic caves at the edges of the houses, the settlements are embellished by groups of popular buildings still preserved in places, by nineteenth-century aristocratic buildings, such as the Molè, Chiaravalloti, Magno and Amoroso adorned with apotropaic masks, by seventeenth- and eighteenth-century religious buildings remodeled with simple neoclassical forms, such as the churches of the Immaculate Conception, Santa Croce, and Maria Santissima di Loreto, which preserve valuable wooden statues and colorful ancient frescoes.