The best hidden towns you can reach by train that have a serious restaurant in Abruzzo

Roccaraso

Why visit Roccaraso

The town sits where the plateaus of Aremogna and Pizzalto meet the higher ground toward Monte Greco, the peak that anchors the whole range at 2,283 meters. The two plateaus are joined by lift, grazed and hiked in summer, cut into pistes in winter: the same trails serve both seasons under different cover.

Four kilometers uphill sits the older, smaller settlement, a medieval frazione that took the weight of the war the valley town below did not escape either. The Germans dug into the Gustav Line where it crossed through here, the Allies bombed in response, and the town below was leveled along with it.

What stands in Roccaraso now was rebuilt after that, stone by stone, from what the bombing left. The first ski lift on Monte Zurrone went up in 1936, years before any of it, and skiing resumed after the rebuilding and never really stopped.

The area has held its place as the south's ski capital since, though the snow line keeps rising: in January 2024 only twenty of Abruzzo's 122 pistes were open. A resort built twice, once by engineers before the war and once by survivors after it, still runs on the same slopes either way.

Chichibio have been named by a guide.

What to see in Roccaraso

• Chiesa di Santa Maria Assunta. Baroque travertine façade, gilded walnut pulpit in the shape of a Greek cross, painted and gilded wooden organs.
• Pietransieri. Medieval frazione where the Limmari Massacre took place; the Gold Medal of Military Valour recognizes what its people lost that winter.
• Piano Aremogna. High pasture and ski terrain at 1,650 meters, the eastern flank of the Alto Sangro ski domain.

How to get to Roccaraso

There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Pescara is roughly 94 minutes away by road.

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Carsoli

Why visit Carsoli

Carsoli sits at 616 meters in the Marsica, between the plain of the former Fucino lake and the valley of the Turano river, with Monte Velino and Monte Calvo both rising above 2,000 meters on its skyline. The modern town stands four kilometres northeast of Alba Fucens's neighbor Carsioli, the Roman colony founded between 302 and 298 BC as a stronghold to guard the road to Alba Fucens; walls and an aqueduct still stand at the locality of Muro Pertuso, surveyed in 1901 by the archaeologists Pfeiffer and Ashby.

The town's religious and military history sits closer to the modern centre than the Roman ruins do. The Castle of Colle Sant'Angelo, raised around the year 1000 by the Counts of the Marsi, stood until later wars, and ruins of its adjoining church remain near the site.

Carsoli's autumn season runs on chestnut and polenta fairs with deep peasant roots, and the patron-saint feast of Santa Vittoria fills the streets with procession and stalls. The town's layout traces its own history: a Roman garrison post relocated over centuries into a medieval and then modern settlement, so that walking from the modern centre outward means walking backward through the different periods that built it.

L'Angolo d'Abruzzo, V'Incanto Osteria Moderna have been named by a guide.

What to see in Carsoli

• Sito archeologico di Carsioli. The city walls and aqueduct still stand at the site, four km from the modern town, surveyed by archaeologists in 1901.
• Chiesa di Santa Maria in Cellis. The church stands on the edge of town, with a rose window set over the main portal.
• Chiesa di Sant'Antonio. 16th-century church inside the centro storico, used as a hospital and later as a nursery, with a frescoed altar inside.

How to get to Carsoli

There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Roma is roughly 60 minutes away by road.

Everything we know about Carsoli

Castel di Sangro

Why visit Castel di Sangro

Castel di Sangro sits at 805 meters at the confluence of the Sangro and Zittola rivers, the main town of the Alto Sangro. Before the Romans it was Aufidena, a Samnite city, and the traces of that older settlement remain on the slopes outside the modern center, separate from the hill town that grew up later.

The town itself divides between the newer lower streets and Civita, the old quarter that climbs toward the monastery above. That geography decided the fighting in November 1943: the monastery's height over the town made it the objective, and the parachute battalion holding it had the advantage the attacking regiment could not overcome in a single night.

The same steep, isolated position that made the town hard to take in 1943 has shaped its more recent story too. A football club from a town of this size reaching Serie B, and a three-star restaurant opening in the countryside nearby, both read as the town periodically outgrowing what its size and location would predict.

Reale, Materia Prima, OlyaS have been named by a guide.

What to see in Castel di Sangro

• Basilica di Santa Maria Assunta. Rebuilt on a Greek-cross plan after the earthquake that destroyed its predecessor, the church stands as the national monument of a town otherwise remade by war and football.
• Civita. The oldest quarter, climbing the hill toward the former monastery that the Canadians tried and failed to take in a single night.
• Aufidena archaeological site. Necropolis and city remains on the slopes outside town, predating the medieval settlement by centuries; finds are held in the municipal archaeological museum.

How to get to Castel di Sangro

There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Pescara is roughly 113 minutes away by road.

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Guardiagrele

Why visit Guardiagrele

Guardiagrele sits at 576 meters on the eastern Majella foothills, thirty kilometers from Pescara. Gabriele D'Annunzio called it the terrazza d'Abruzzo for the views over the mountains and valleys from its piazzas.

Documented in an eleventh-century papal bull as a villa named Grele, the town grew through the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries as a stronghold of the Kingdom of Naples, with permission from the king to mint coins. It produced the late medieval goldsmith Nicola Gallucci, known as Nicola da Guardiagrele (c.1385-c.1462), trained on Gothic and Tuscan models including Lorenzo Ghiberti, who left work in cathedrals across Abruzzo.

The collegiate church of Santa Maria Maggiore, built at the start of the thirteenth century outside the walls and absorbed into the town in the centuries after, carries a fifteenth-century portal with a Coronation of the Virgin lunette by Nicola, now in the Duomo museum. Wrought-iron, copper and gold work still operate from workshops in the centro storico.

Villa Maiella, La Grotta dei Raselli have been named by a guide.

What to see in Guardiagrele

• Collegiata di Santa Maria Maggiore. Thirteenth-century collegiate church with a massive bell tower, fifteenth-century portal, and the Nicola da Guardiagrele Coronation lunette in its museum.
• Museo del Duomo. Cathedral museum holding Nicola da Guardiagrele's marble lunette, his goldwork, and liturgical objects from the surrounding Majella churches.
• Botteghe del rame e del ferro battuto. Active copper and wrought-iron workshops in the centro storico, the surviving craft tradition that produced Nicola Gallucci in the late fourteenth century.

How to get to Guardiagrele

There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Pescara is roughly 48 minutes away by road.

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Alba Adriatica

Why visit Alba Adriatica

Alba Adriatica is the northernmost 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.

Da Gianfranco, Il Palmizio have been named by a guide.

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

There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Pescara is roughly 51 minutes away by road.

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Pineto

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 centre stands the Torre del Cerrano, built around 1568 by Charles V 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.

Resilienza, La Conchiglia d'Oro, Bacucco d’Oro have been named by a guide.

What to see in Pineto

• Torre del Cerrano. Sixteenth-century watchtower built around 1568 under Charles V 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

There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Pescara is roughly 26 minutes away by road.

Everything we know about Pineto