Abruzzo coast, Italy: 9 coastal towns from Alba Adriatica to Vasto

Alba Adriatica

One of the seven Teramo beach towns, with three kilometers of fine sand called the Spiaggia d'Argento. It has a station.

Why visit Alba Adriatica

Alba Adriatica is one of the seven coastal communes of the province of Teramo, the chain of resort towns known collectively as the seven sisters. The commune did not exist before 1956: it was created by referendum that year when the coastal residents of Tortoreto voted for administrative autonomy.

The town's identity is its sand. The three-kilometer beach is called the Spiaggia d'Argento, the silver beach, for the fineness of its grains.

The Blue Flag flew here continuously from 2000 to 2013 and again in recent years. The lungomare runs the whole length of the commune, palm-lined and largely flat, joining the towns on either side without a clear visual break.

Inland from the beach, the town is laid out on a 20th-century grid, with no centro storico to speak of: the historic centers belong to the older inland communes. Alba Adriatica was built to be a beach.

The beach here holds a Blue Flag, the international award a comune has to win back every year on water quality, beach management and safety. The comune also holds a Bandiera Lilla for welcoming disabled visitors.

What to see in Alba Adriatica

• Spiaggia d'Argento. The three-kilometer fine-sand beach, gently sloped, Blue-Flag-rated for water quality continuously from 2000 to 2013 and after.
• Lungomare Marconi. Palm-lined promenade running the length of the commune, joining Tortoreto Lido to the north and Giulianova to the south.
• Chiesa Sant'Eufemia. Parish church set on the inland grid, a modest 20th-century construction reflecting the town's recent 1956 foundation date.

How to get to Alba Adriatica

It has its own railway station. Pescara is about 50 min away by road. The full route from Rome.

Everything we know about Alba Adriatica

Giulianova

A Renaissance old town on the hill and a lido below it with one of Abruzzo's four main fishing ports, where the dish is brodetto alla giuliese. It has a station.

Why visit Giulianova

The town sits at the mouth of the Tordino river, where colonists from Praetutii territory established Castrum Novum in the 3rd century BC. A medieval settlement, Castrum divi Flaviani, later stood on the same hill until it was destroyed in the Battle of the Tordino in 1460.

What rose after covers the upper part of the town today: a walled, planned town on the hill, 68 meters above the water. The Lido came later and by a different route, growing from the 19th century around the railway rather than around any single founding decision.

It is now one of Abruzzo's main fishing ports, and the fish stew served along its promenade, brodetto alla giuliese, is the local counterpart to the better-known Vastese version from further south. The sanctuary on the road between the two halves of town marks the physical and historical hinge between them: hill above, coast below.

In August the Sant'Andrea feast carries the saint by boat along the water, a rite that belongs to the Lido's fishing life rather than to the hill's planned streets. The town, in effect, holds two founding stories side by side, one Renaissance and deliberate, one maritime and gradual, and neither has absorbed the other.

The beach here holds a Blue Flag, the international award a comune has to win back every year on water quality, beach management and safety.

What to see in Giulianova

• Duomo di San Flaviano. Cathedral in the hilltop Paese, its dome visible above the Renaissance street plan. Holds the relics of the saint after whom the medieval settlement was named.
• Paese. The hilltop town, walled and centered on a single piazza, its street plan unchanged since Giulio Antonio Acquaviva laid it out over the ruins of the settlement destroyed in 1460.
• Lido. The coastal town with promenade, fishing port and Blue-Flag beach, developed from the 19th-century railway era.

How to get to Giulianova

It has its own railway station. Pescara is about 46 min away by road. The full route from Rome.

Everything we know about Giulianova

Roseto degli Abruzzi

Ten kilometers of low-rise sand with a Blue Flag every year since 1995, and the old village of Montepagano on the hill above. It has a station.

Why visit Roseto degli Abruzzi

Roseto degli Abruzzi sits on the Adriatic between Giulianova and Pineto, with a flat lower town at sea level and the older nucleus of Montepagano on a hill 285 meters above. Ten kilometers of sand run continuously from the Tordino river south to the Vomano, divided into the historic lidos and the Cologna stretch.

The town carried the name Rosburgo until 1927, when it was changed because the Austrian-sounding form had become unpopular after the First World War. Rosburgo had been the name given in 1887 to the coastal quarter of Montepagano, known until then as Le Quote, after the roses grown widely around it.

Roseto has held a Bandiera Blu Blue Flag every year since 1999 and is a Borgo Autentico d'Italia. The Riserva Naturale del Borsacchio, at the northern edge of town, protects the last dunes and Mediterranean scrub on this stretch of coast.

The beach here holds a Blue Flag, the international award a comune has to win back every year on water quality, beach management and safety. The comune also holds a Bandiera Lilla for welcoming disabled visitors.

What to see in Roseto degli Abruzzi

• Lungomare and lidos. Ten kilometers of low-rise sand from the Tordino to the Vomano, with the Lido delle Rose, Cologna, and free-beach sections.
• Montepagano. Original medieval village on a hill 285 meters above the coast, with walls, stone houses, and a panoramic terrace over the sea.
• Riserva Naturale del Borsacchio. Coastal nature reserve at the north end of town, protecting dunes, Mediterranean scrub, and the nesting site of the Kentish plover.

How to get to Roseto degli Abruzzi

It has its own railway station. Pescara is about 37 min away by road. The full route from Rome.

Everything we know about Roseto degli Abruzzi

Pineto

A planned beach town behind a coastal pine forest, with the sixteenth-century Torre del Cerrano at the center of Abruzzo's first marine reserve. It has a station.

Why visit Pineto

Pineto sits at sea level, one of the Sette Sorelle, the seven Adriatic resorts of the Teramo coast. The town was planned in the 1920s by Luigi Filiani as a beach resort under pine forest, and renamed Pineto in 1925 after Gabriele D'Annunzio's poem La Pioggia nel Pineto.

In 1929 it replaced Mutignano, the older hill village above, as the capoluogo of the comune. Two kilometers south of the center stands the Torre del Cerrano, built around 1568 under Philip II as a watchtower against Ottoman raiders.

In 2010 the tower and the stretch of sea in front of it became Abruzzo's first marine protected area, 3,431 hectares of coast and shallow water. The beach has held a Blue Flag in most years since 2007.

The pine canopy, planted to hold the dunes, still shades the seafront promenade as far north as the Vibrata river.

The beach here holds a Blue Flag, the international award a comune has to win back every year on water quality, beach management and safety.

What to see in Pineto

• Torre del Cerrano. Sixteenth-century watchtower built around 1568 under Philip II against Ottoman raids, now the gateway to Abruzzo's first marine reserve.
• Area Marina Protetta Torre del Cerrano. 3,431 hectares of protected coast and shallow Adriatic water established in 2010, the first marine reserve in the region.
• Pineta Catucci. Coastal pine forest planted in the early twentieth century to hold the dunes, shading the seafront promenade and the bike path.

How to get to Pineto

It has its own railway station. Pescara is about 26 min away by road. The full route from Rome.

Everything we know about Pineto

Silvi

Nine kilometers of Blue Flag beach at Silvi Marina, and the medieval Silvi Paese on its ridge at 242 meters. It has a station.

Why visit Silvi

Silvi is two places held together by a hill. The upper town sits at 242 meters on a ridge above the water, known as Castrum Silvi in the Middle Ages and as Matrinum in earlier times.

The lower town, a fishing strip until 1931, took over as municipal seat that year and turned the coast into a summer resort, so the newer half now outranks the older one administratively even as the older half keeps the name's origin. The two halves run on industries that have nothing to do with each other and never did: one bottled its economy in licorice from a converted theater in the 1930s, the other guards a stretch of protected sea and dune around a sixteenth-century watchtower.

Pescara is fifteen kilometers south. What holds the town together is not a shared trade but the hill itself, the thing that separates the medieval ridge from the resort strip below and forces the place to be read as two settlements rather than one.

The beach here holds a Blue Flag, the international award a comune has to win back every year on water quality, beach management and safety.

What to see in Silvi

• Silvi Paese. Stone alleys along a ridge, the old Castrum Silvi, with the coastline visible the length of the walk.
• Torre del Cerrano. The watchtower stands alone on the sand between the two towns, squat and stone, with the reserve's dune scrub pressing up against its base.
• Area Marina Protetta Torre del Cerrano. The first marine protected area in Abruzzo, established in 2010, covering a seven-kilometer stretch of coastline with intact dunes.

How to get to Silvi

It has its own railway station. Pescara is about 26 min away by road. The full route from Rome.

Everything we know about Silvi

Ortona

A working port under an Aragonese castle, not a resort, and the town of the street battle of December 1943. It has a station.

Why visit Ortona

Ortona is one of the largest towns on the Costa dei Trabocchi and the least postcard-like. It has a real harbor with real boats in it, a castle on the cliff edge that the sea is slowly taking back, and a cathedral that has drawn pilgrims since 1258, when the relics were carried here from Chios.

It is also a war town. Over eight days at the end of 1943 Canadian and German troops fought through these streets house by house, and the town that stands now was largely rebuilt afterwards.

The Moro River cemetery on the edge of town is where most visitors end up going quiet.

The beach here holds a Blue Flag, the international award a comune has to win back every year on water quality, beach management and safety.

What to see in Ortona

• Castello Aragonese. The fifteenth-century castle on the cliff above the port, open to walk around. Coastal erosion has taken part of it, which is visible from the seaward side.
• Basilica di San Tommaso Apostolo. The cathedral holding relics venerated as those of the apostle Thomas, brought from the island of Chios in 1258.
• Passeggiata Orientale. The belvedere walk along the cliff edge, looking north up the coast toward Pescara.

How to get to Ortona

It has its own railway station. Pescara is about 33 min away by road. The full route from Rome.

Everything we know about Ortona

Rocca San Giovanni

A walled hill town at 155 meters, with the Cavalluccio beach and a working trabocco below it.

Why visit Rocca San Giovanni

Rocca San Giovanni stands on a rocky hill above the Adriatic between the mouths of the Sangro and Feltrino rivers. The village was founded by Oderisius I, abbot of the nearby abbey, who feared Norman advances on Chieti and built a fortified settlement as a defensive outpost for his monastery.

The relationship between the two places is vertical: the abbey holds the lower slope toward the water, three kilometers down, while the fortified village occupies the high ground it was built to defend, the walls still tracing that original defensive purpose. The coast beneath both is fished from timber platforms that give the shoreline its name, and the old railway bed that once ran along that shore has become a path connecting the beach, the abbey, and the hill town in a single line of movement.

The vineyards run the other direction, down from the hill toward the sea, so the whole territory reads as a set of descending bands: castle, monastery, rail line, water, each built to serve or watch the one below it.

What to see in Rocca San Giovanni

• Abbazia di San Giovanni in Venere. The abbey sits on a panoramic terrace above the Adriatic, one of Abruzzo's major religious sites, its Romanesque stone visible from the slope above long before the village walls come into view.
• Centro storico. The walled medieval core is listed among the Borghi più belli d'Italia, its streets narrow and contained within the old fortified perimeter built to watch the coast below.
• Chiesa di San Matteo Apostolo. Three-nave Romanesque parish church inside the walls, restored multiple times, with a nineteenth-century neo-medieval town hall alongside.

How to get to Rocca San Giovanni

Pescara is about 45 min away by road.

Everything we know about Rocca San Giovanni

Fossacesia

The abbey of San Giovanni in Venere looks down the coast from here, over olive groves and the trabocchi. It has a station.

Why visit Fossacesia

Most people arrive at Fossacesia for the abbey and stay for the coast underneath it. San Giovanni in Venere was rebuilt in the twelfth century on ground that had held a temple to Venus, which is where the name comes from, and it sits on a shoulder of hill with the Adriatic laid out below and olive groves on every side.

Down at sea level, Fossacesia Marina is the northern end of the Via Verde, the cycle path laid along the route of the old coastal railway, and the trabocchi themselves stand out over the water on their wooden legs.

The beach here holds a Blue Flag, the international award a comune has to win back every year on water quality, beach management and safety.

What to see in Fossacesia

• Abbazia di San Giovanni in Venere. The Benedictine abbey above the coast, rebuilt in the twelfth century on the site of a Roman temple. The carved portal and the crypt are the reasons to climb up.
• Via Verde della Costa dei Trabocchi. The coastal cycle path on the old railway line. Fossacesia Marina is its northern trailhead.
• The trabocchi. The timber fishing platforms built out over the water along this stretch of coast. Several are still worked and a few serve dinner.

How to get to Fossacesia

It has its own railway station. Pescara is about 44 min away by road.

Everything we know about Fossacesia

Vasto

On a hill at 144 meters at the southern end of the Costa dei Trabocchi, home of brodetto alla vastese, with the beaches of the Punta Aderci reserve to the north. It has a station.

Why visit Vasto

Vasto was the Roman Histonium, a name that predates the hill town's later medieval and Renaissance layers. It sits at 144 meters above the Adriatic, with the upper town, the castle and palace, set above the coast and the Punta Aderci reserve lying below to the north, cliffs and sandy beach against the built hill.

The coast running north from here to Ortona is the Costa dei Trabocchi, seventy kilometers of shoreline named for the wooden stilt-fishing platforms that still work its length. The brodetto alla vastese was invented, by tradition, in 1800 by the wife of a fisherman in the Trave district, who enriched the daily catch with tomato, parsley and garlic from her vegetable garden, a dish born of the same waters the trabocchi work.

The summer Capriccio festival fills the city with music in August. Upper town, reserve, and coast read as one arrangement: a hill settlement that has always faced the sea it feeds from and now also draws visitors to.

The beach here holds a Blue Flag, the international award a comune has to win back every year on water quality, beach management and safety.

What to see in Vasto

• Palazzo d'Avalos. The palace now houses the civic archaeological museum, the picture gallery and the museum of historic costume, its rooms given over to collections rather than court life.
• Castello Caldoresco. Damaged in the Ottoman raid of 1566 and restored afterward, the castle Giacomo Caldora built in 1439 still anchors the upper town, its walls marked by the centuries.
• Punta Aderci. A nature reserve north of the town with sandy beaches, cliffs, and a migratory bird stopover protected since 1998, lying below the hill the old town sits on.

How to get to Vasto

It has its own railway station. Pescara is about 59 min away by road.

Everything we know about Vasto