★ Town · L'Aquila and the Gran SassoSanto Stefano di SessanioA medieval village of white stone on the slopes of the Gran Sasso, almost abandoned until a few decades ago and now reborn.
The storyThe village belonged to the Medici of Florence, who traded the wool of Abruzzo's sheep: the tower recalls this, collapsed in the 2009 earthquake and since rebuilt. Emptied by emigration in the 20th century, in the late 1990s it was chosen by an Italian-Swedish entrepreneur, Daniele Kihlgren, who restored the houses while keeping the blackened walls, simple furniture and original materials, and turned it into an albergo diffuso, a hotel spread across the village: a model later copied all over Italy. Try the Santo Stefano lentils.
Full page, why go and what's nearby →★ History and art · L'Aquila and the Gran SassoCaporcianoA small stone church in a village on the plateau, its interior entirely covered in medieval frescoes.
The storyThe frescoes, dated 1263, tell the life of Christ and St Pellegrino and include a rare illustrated calendar with the labours of the months, the signs of the zodiac and the feast days. For its intact colours and the completeness of the cycle, the oratory is called «the Sistine Chapel of Abruzzo». Just above stands the Romanesque church of Santa Maria Assunta, with a carved pulpit.
Full page, why go and what's nearby →★ Town · L'Aquila and the Gran SassoNavelliA terraced village on a hill above a plain planted with saffron, which turns purple with flowers in autumn.
The storyTradition says that in the 13th century a Dominican friar from Navelli, Domenico Santucci, brought saffron bulbs from Spain. The climate of the plateau proved perfect, and L'Aquila saffron became one of the finest in the world, traded as far as Milan, Venice and Marseille. Even today the flowers are picked by hand at dawn, between late October and early November, and the stigmas are toasted over embers.
Full page, why go and what's nearby →★ History and art · Marsica, Sulmona and the Abruzzo National ParkCapistrelloThe tunnels and shafts dug by the Romans through the mountain to drain Lake Fucino, in an archaeological park.
The storyThe Fucino was Italy's third-largest lake, and its floods inundated the fields. Emperor Claudius had a tunnel almost six kilometres long dug beneath Monte Salviano to drain its water: according to ancient writers, thirty thousand men worked on it for eleven years, and in AD 52 the work was inaugurated with a naval battle on the lake. The lake was only fully drained in the 19th century, by Prince Alessandro Torlonia, who partly reused the Roman route.
Full page, why go and what's nearby →★ History and art · The MajellaRoccamoriceMedieval hermitages carved into the rock faces of the Majella, such as San Bartolomeo in Legio, reached by a path that ends on a stairway cut into the rock.
The storyPietro da Morrone lived in these hermitages, a hermit monk who in 1294, at about eighty, was elected pope with the name Celestine V. After a few months he renounced the papacy, a gesture that Dante, according to many scholars, called «the great refusal». For centuries the Majella was the «sacred mountain», inhabited by hermits, and its silence has remained almost intact.
Full page, why go and what's nearby →★ History and art · Pescara, Chieti and the Trabocchi CoastChietiA stone statue more than two metres tall of an Italic warrior, with a large disc-shaped headdress, kept in the archaeological museum in Chieti.
The storyIn 1934 a farmer in Capestrano, ploughing his vineyard, struck a large stone with his plough: it was the statue of a prince of the Vestini, an Italic people, carved in the 6th century BC. The statue bears an inscription in an ancient language that is still partly a mystery. The warrior has become the symbol of Abruzzo, and the Villa Frigerj museum displays it in a room all of its own.
Full page, why go and what's nearby →★ History and art · Teramo and the hillsCivitella del TrontoA fortress more than five hundred metres long on a rocky ridge, above a village of narrow lanes, with views of the Laga mountains and the sea.
The storyIt was the border fortress of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies facing the Papal States. In 1860–1861 the Bourbon garrison withstood a long siege and only surrendered on 20 March 1861, three days after the proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy: it was the last Bourbon stronghold to fall. The village also has the «ruetta», considered one of the narrowest streets in Italy.
Full page, why go and what's nearby →