The resort name of Campo Felice was chosen because of the happiness of “snow sailors” at the end of the sixties.

It is in the middle of a wide shell, whose edges are represented by five mountains. All of them are high more than two thousand metres and are covered with snow from November to April. From one of these peaks, Monte Rotondo exactly, when days are clear, you can enjoy a striking view taking at one single glance the highest tops of Abruzzi: Gran Sasso, Sirente, Velino, Duchessa and Maiella.

These absolutely quiet places seemed to Mr. Aldo Jacovitti, Cavaliere del Lavoro, a worthy touristic increase in value for the development of the Altopiano delle Rocche.

Easterly delimited by Monte Rotondo outline, that hollow set between the slopes of Nibbio and Serralunga seemed to his eyes of a mountain fan an ideal place for setting up a ski resort of an excellent quality.

In Abruzzi great specialists were called for this purpose: the town-planner Jean Cognet (who carried out some of the most important French resorts of the so called “third generation”), the celebrated architects Moretti from Rome and Prof. Gardella from Milan, the twice downhill skiing world champion Emile Allais, Andrè Simond (the Sport Secretary of Chamrousse, Grenoble, during the Olympic Games in winter 1968), Captain Giuseppe Lamberti (at that time the Sport Secretary of Cervinia), Gigi Panei (the legendary Abruzzi alpine guide at Courmayeur), and Giuseppe Fabre (the General of the Alpine and the organizer of the Olympic Games in Rome, Tokio and Mexico City as well).

Thanks to the intuition of the so-called “Penne nere” and while he was approaching Rome by train, invited by Mr. Jacovitti, this celebrated General detects on a military map of the area the exact place where now the resort is. Such a crowd of technicians was in charge of studying an integrated winter resort in the mountain basin of Campo Felice. So, in addition to the facilities and the necessary infrastructures, the executive plan foresaw a living and a hotel area at the base of the snow-system, and excavating a tunnel below Serralunga for the connection between Motorway A24 and the Subequanan Valley.