You stroll down to the cluster of stone houses and cobbled passages below. The once-abandoned hamlet is being brought quietly back to life by a few dedicated families who, with national park and regional support, are slowly renovating the tumbledown buildings. One of the first to re-open was Rifugio Rocca Calascio, where your meal, bath and bed await. Earlier you passed through the medieval village of Santo Stefano di Sessanio, now almost fully restored to its Medici heyday. Abruzzo’s conservation and renewal policies are bearing remarkable fruit.
Children’s laughter and the smell of pasta sauce are the only directions you need. A fox sneaking across the hillside sets the dogs off again. This is a special place – an astounding protected landscape, criss-crossed with tracks and trails, waiting for adventurous spirits to discover it for themselves.
Abruzzo
Despite its central location and close proximity to Rome, Abruzzo is one of Italy’s least known and populated regions – a spectacular and harmonious blend of snowy mountains, grassy plains and forested canyons; of hillside olive groves, vineyards and long sandy beaches. Its natural riches are protected in three national parks, one regional park and many smaller reserves. Thousands of years of history are reflected in a multitude of abandoned castles, hilltop villages and ancient farmsteads; religious dedication echoed in splendid abbeys, silent churches and remote hermitages.
It’s a wonderful place to get to know. The Abruzzesi are resourceful, respectful and welcoming people – with a sure view of their global future but a firm sense of their history and tradition. Neither northern nor southern, the spirit of Abruzzo is its own.
The wild and high Apennine ridges form the grain of the land. Two thirds of the area is mountainous and one third is protected. The claim to be the greenest region in Europe is well founded.
Ancient sheep droves run hundreds of kilometres from the coastal plain of Puglia northwards into the mountain pastures of Abruzzo – the traditional routes of the great bi-annual migration of flocks and shepherds known as the transumanza.
The mountains are home to marvellous and rare plants and animals. The highest peaks of peninsular Italy are here, their slopes supporting ski resorts and an extensive network of summer trekking and mountain biking trails. The mountains fall to the Adriatic, the intervening hills covered in vines, olives and orchards; the coastline itself is developed with resorts offering warm, safe bathing – beach bars, sun shades and loungers as far as you can see.
The region is divided into four provinces, each named after its capital town – L’Aquila, Chieti, Pescara and Teramo. L’Aquila is also the seat of regional government and Abruzzo’s cultural centre. Its university can trace its roots back over 500 years. It’s a refined and beautiful city situated high on the flanks of the Gran Sasso mountains and continuing ever more quickly to recover from the major earthquake of 2009. The largest settlement, though, is relatively modern Pescara, where over 120,000 live in new apartment blocks and villas on the long Adriatic shore.
Twenty-three of Abruzzo’s villages have been designated among the most beautiful in Italy – the highest number of all the regions of the country. Despite this, Abruzzo remains a largely unfashionable corner of Italy and the better for it. Spared overwhelming touristic icons (no leaning tower or grand baroque fountain), it has revealed itself slowly to the outside world. Development is at a steady pace. There are manufacturing industries, motorway connections, a large coastal city (Pescara, a favoured holiday spot of Italians), sophisticated restaurants and modern shopping malls but, mostly, low key. What can’t escape your attention, though, is the empty mountainous countryside – a magnificent unspoilt landscape to savour and explore.
Geological history
The Apennine mountains of Abruzzo are formed predominately of limestone and other calcareous sediments dating from the Mesozoic period in geological history – between 250 million years and 67 million years ago. The sediments were laid down in the warm, calm waters of the long-gone Tethys Sea and marine fossils are commonly found in the region. This was the age of the dinosaurs and their relics, too, have been uncovered.
Mountain building began very recently in geological terms and is a process that continues today. The tectonic make-up of peninsular Italy is complex but, essentially, the Adriatic plate is being dragged south westwards (subducted) beneath the adjacent plate, causing the sedimentary rocks above the line of subduction to be crumpled upwards, forming the Apennine chain. Long considered to be a result of the same event that created the Alps, it is now known that the Apennines are quite independent geologically and were formed much later. The area remains seismically active as the stresses built up during continuing plate movement are released with sometimes shattering consequences.
The grain of the land runs north west to south east – perpendicular to the direction of movement of the Adriatic plate. The upthrust limestone massifs have been sculpted by ice and water and eroded into sharp peaks and rounded plateaus, gashed by narrow ravines and separated by high grassy basins where once large lakes lay.
The upper part of the Celano gorge (Walk 35)
Human history
Human occupation can be traced back to Neolithic times. In the millennia BC, present-day Abruzzo was the home of many Italic tribes – notably the Frentani, the Vestini, the Marsi and the Paeligni. The tribes united to resist Etruscan and Roman attempts to annex their lands, forming a joint base at present-day Corfinio, near Sulmona, which they named Italia. After a final defeat during the Social Wars, the tribes aligned with the Romans to play an important role in the development and sustainment of their empire. (Ovid, the famous Roman poet, was born in Sulmona in 43BC.) The name Italia, however, lived on and was eventually adopted by the reunified nation in the 19th century.
Following the fall of the Roman Empire and the spread of Christianity, the history of Abruzzo becomes complex and confused. Initially the area fell under the control of the Lombards, as a part of their Duchy of Spoleto, which was then given by Charlemagne to the church. This era saw the establishment of many religious houses – great abbeys and cathedrals as well as monastic retreats.
Then came the Normans, whose control reached to southern Italy. They established the Kingdom of Sicily, of which Abruzzo became a part. The Normans ceded the kingdom to the Swabians, who in 1268 were in turn defeated by the House of Anjou. During Angevin rule, Abruzzo became a part of the Kingdom of Naples. The University of L’Aquila was founded in 1458.
In the early 16th century, the Spanish arrived to take control. They merged the Kingdom of Naples into the larger Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. After 1700 Spain itself and its territories came to be ruled by the House of Bourbon. Bourbon rule of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies continued uninterrupted until the Risorgimento in 1860 – the unification of Italy, spearheaded by Garibaldi’s army, and the foundation of the modern state.
In the modern era, Abruzzo knew desperate poverty following the Second World War. During this time many thousands of families emigrated to North and South America, Australia and other parts of Europe, to be followed by relatively recent economic recovery and development. Abruzzo became a separate region of Italy in the 1960s and is now the most prosperous of all in the official south.
The Tre Portoni from Monte Focalone (Walk 8)
Animals and birds
The remoteness and height of the Abruzzo mountains, the depths of its native forest and the careful protection afforded by national and regional parks have created one of Italy’s most wonderful wildlife refuges.
Clinging on in the quietest corners of the Abruzzo National Park (and, perhaps, the Maiella and Sirente-Velino) is the Marsican brown bear. It is feared there may be just 50–60 individuals left, and you are unlikely to see one. Evidence of their passing