7 hill towns near Pescara, Italy, within an hour

Città Sant'Angelo

A ridge town at 320 meters looking over the olive hills to the sea, with a thirteenth-century Collegiata whose portico runs 47 meters.

Why visit Città Sant'Angelo

Città Sant'Angelo sits on a ridge at 320 meters, fifteen kilometers from Pescara and a clear day's walk from the Adriatic. The Vestini, an Italic Sabine tribe, held this ground before Rome; the medieval town that grew up here was called Castrum Sancti Angeli in the twelfth century and given its current name in 1528.

By then it was one of the three major seats of the Penne-Atri diocese. The Collegiata di San Michele Arcangelo, rebuilt in the fourteenth century, runs forty-seven meters along its fifteenth-century portico, the same length as the bell tower is tall.

Its double organ holds 1,218 pipes and was restored in 2023 after nearly sixty years of silence. The Corso Vittorio Emanuele still threads the ridge between olive groves and vineyards, and the town holds four designations at once: Borghi più belli, Cittaslow, Città del Vino and Città dell'Olio.

Few inland communes this close to the coast hold all four.

What to see in Città Sant'Angelo

• Collegiata di San Michele Arcangelo. Fourteenth-century church with a forty-seven meter fifteenth-century portico, a 1326 portal, and the 1457 tomb of bishop Amico di Buonamicizia.
• Campanile della Collegiata. Bell tower designed by Antonio da Lodi, finished in 1425, the same height as the portico is long.
• Centro storico. Linear medieval ridge town stretched along the Corso Vittorio Emanuele, with palazzi and small churches from the fourteenth to eighteenth centuries.

How to get to Città Sant'Angelo

Pescara is about 25 min away by road.

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Pianella

Home of the dritta olive and part of Abruzzo's golden triangle of olive oil, with a basilica founded in 963.

Why visit Pianella

Pianella sits at 236 meters between the Tavo and Pescara rivers, fifteen kilometers inland from Pescara. The first documented mention dates to 963, when Pandolfo, Prince of Capua, ordered the construction of the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore on the foundations of an old temple of Vesta.

Saracens, Normans, the Aquaviva, and the Orsini all passed through; in 1522 the village became a fief of Margherita d'Austria Farnese, and Ferdinand IV later granted it the title of Royal City. The local agricultural identity is older than all of that.

Pianella shares with Loreto Aprutino and Moscufo the so-called Golden Triangle of Abruzzo olive oil, producing the DOP Aprutino Pescarese, and it is the home of the dritta cultivar, a medium-early olive native to the Vestine area that gives a fruity, clear-flavored oil. The Cittaslow membership and the Città dell'Olio listing both run on that long agricultural history.

What to see in Pianella

• Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore. Pre-Romanesque-Romanesque basilica founded in 963 by Pandolfo, Prince of Capua, built over an old temple of Vesta on the village hill.
• Centro storico. Medieval hill nucleus with traces of the Aquaviva and Orsini periods, surrounded by the surviving fragments of Farnese-era walls.
• Oliveti di varietà dritta. Hillside groves of the native dritta cultivar, basis of the DOP Aprutino Pescarese extra virgin olive oil produced by local frantoi.

How to get to Pianella

Pescara is about 28 min away by road.

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Manoppello

Above the Pescara river, where the Capuchins have kept the Volto Santo veil since 1620. It has a station.

Why visit Manoppello

Manoppello sits on a hill on the right bank of the Pescara river, about twenty-five kilometers from the city of Pescara and at the foot of the Maiella massif. The old center holds the river's edge while the abbey stands apart from it, outside the town proper, on ground that carried a Roman temple before it carried a church.

The relic venerated on the hill above the town reached the Capuchin church in 1638, given by Donato Antonio de Fabritiis, who had bought it from the Leonelli family. The countryside around both church and abbey shares a building tradition, earth rammed into walls, common enough across the valley to have earned the commune its place in a network built to recognize it.

The town's geography is therefore layered rather than single: a river-bank settlement, a devotional site on the hill above it, an abbey standing separate on former Roman ground, and a farming countryside that built in earth rather than stone. Each part answers to a different age, and together they show a place that grew by accretion rather than around one center.

What to see in Manoppello

• Basilica del Volto Santo. Capuchin basilica on the hill above town, holding the veil reputed to be the Veil of Veronica, a translucent cloth bearing a faint image of a human face.
• Abbazia di Santa Maria Arabona. Cistercian abbey founded in 1197, standing outside the town on ground once occupied by a temple to Bona Dea, its choir carrying frescoes by Antonio Martini di Atri.
• Centro Storico. Medieval core on the right bank of the Pescara, built in the rammed-earth technique of the surrounding countryside.

How to get to Manoppello

It has its own railway station. Pescara is about 32 min away by road. The full route from Rome.

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Loreto Aprutino

In the Aprutino olive country at 290 meters, with an olive-oil museum and a castle on the top of the ridge.

Why visit Loreto Aprutino

Loreto Aprutino sits at 290 meters on a hill twenty kilometers inland from Pescara, in the so-called Golden Triangle of Abruzzo olive oil that it shares with Pianella and Moscufo. Pre-Roman necropoleis at Colle-Fiorano and Farina-Cardito show a settlement long before the medieval town.

The Romanesque-Gothic church of Santa Maria in Piano, built around 1280, holds the Giudizio particolare delle anime, a wall fresco in encaustic technique that shows souls crossing a bridge thin as a human hair, falling into a river of boiling pitch if not saved; the Aquinas family commissioned the cycle. Castello Chiola dominates the ridge above the town, restored by the Chiola family, who owned it from 1843 to 1995.

The olive-oil tradition runs to the fourth century BC; the local DOP is Aprutino Pescarese, and the town's Museo dell'Olio explains the chain from grove to bottle. The Acerbo Castelli ceramics collection covers majolica from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century.

What to see in Loreto Aprutino

• Chiesa di Santa Maria in Piano. Church from 1280 with the encaustic fresco Giudizio particolare delle anime, the bridge-of-hair Judgment commissioned by the Aquinas family.
• Castello Chiola. Medieval castle on the highest point of the ridge, restored by the Chiola family after 1843, now a hotel and still the dominant skyline feature.
• Museo Acerbo delle Ceramiche di Castelli. Collection of Castelli majolica from the fifteenth to nineteenth century, the most prestigious ceramic tradition of Abruzzo.

How to get to Loreto Aprutino

Pescara is about 38 min away by road.

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Tocco da Casauria

At 356 meters between the Pescara river and the Majella, the town of the Centerba herb liqueur, with the abbey of San Clemente a Casauria just outside it.

Why visit Tocco da Casauria

Tocco sits on a hill at 356 meters between the Pescara river and the Arolle stream, with the Maiella massif behind it. The town is first recorded in 872 as an estate under the abbey nearby, which Louis II founded in fulfillment of a vow made during his imprisonment in Benevento.

The abbey held the relics of Pope Clement I. The town was simply Tocco until after Italian unification in 1861, when Casauria was added to its name to honor the abbey it grew up beside.

The centro storico is dominated by the Caracciolo Castle, rebuilt in Renaissance style after the 1456 earthquake, while the lower slopes toward the Pescara valley carry olive groves and Montepulciano vines, the produce that earned the town its place among the Città dell'Olio and Città del Vino. Centerba, the high-proof liqueur made from a hundred Maiella herbs, has been distilled here since the mid-19th century by the Toro family.

What holds the town together is the relationship between the abbey below and the settlement on the hill: a monastic foundation that gave the place its name, its early authority, and, centuries later, its liqueur trade and vineyards grew up in the valley it once governed.

What to see in Tocco da Casauria

• Abbazia di San Clemente a Casauria. A national monument since 1894, standing just outside the commune in Castiglione. Founded by Louis II, its bronze doors and their 72 panels remain the reason to make the detour.
• Castello Caracciolo. First raised in the 11th century, rebuilt under Frederick II and again in Renaissance style after the 1456 earthquake, dominating the centro storico.
• Chiesa di Sant'Eustachio. Main church of Tocco, first recorded in 1169 and rebuilt in 18th-century style after the 1706 earthquake, named for the town's patron, with the statue of the saint inside.

How to get to Tocco da Casauria

Pescara is about 47 min away by road. The full route from Rome.

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Penne

The brick town at 438 meters, called the small Siena for its red-brick streets, and one of the Borghi più belli d'Italia.

Why visit Penne

Penne sits at 438 meters on four hills between the Tavo and Fino rivers, about twenty kilometers from the Adriatic. Of pre-Roman origin, the town was the capital of the Vestini Italic people no later than 300 BC; in around 89 BC the Vestini and other Italic tribes were defeated by Rome in the Social War.

The historic center is built almost entirely of red brick. Streets, palazzi, churches and pavements all share the same warm tone, which earned Penne the nickname Città del Mattone, the City of Bricks, and the literary tag the small Siena.

The Duomo, dedicated to Saint Massimo of Aveia, stands on a crypt of the tenth or eleventh century; its brick façade was rebuilt in Romanesque style after the war around a thirteenth-century Gothic portal, while the crypt and the bell tower, medieval at its base, survive from the older church. Allied bombing levelled large parts of the town in the Second World War, and in 2006 Penne received the Silver Medal of Civic Merit for what its civilians suffered.

What to see in Penne

• Duomo (Cattedrale di San Massimo). Concathedral of the Pescara-Penne archdiocese built over a crypt of the tenth or eleventh century, with a thirteenth-century Gothic portal and a bell tower medieval at its base.
• Museo Diocesano. Civic and diocesan museum G. B. Leopardi in the bishop's palace beside the Duomo, holding religious art and archaeological finds from the city.
• Chiesa di Santa Maria in Colleromano. Church of Benedictine origin, traced to the thirteenth century, on Colle Romano outside the historic core, handed to the Franciscans in 1505.

How to get to Penne

Pescara is about 49 min away by road.

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Roccamorice

The furthest, an hour away at 520 meters inside the Majella National Park, below the rock-cut hermitages where the future Pope Celestine V lived.

Why visit Roccamorice

Roccamorice sits at 520 meters on the western flank of the Majella massif, inside the boundaries of the national park. The village is thought to predate the year 1000, first recorded as Rocca Morica in 1066, and stayed small, its fortunes shaped less by the settlement itself than by the limestone around it, where the rock has been hollowed into retreats since before the 11th century.

A hermit spent two years in one of them before his election as Pope, and the larger of the two hermitages, cut partly into a cliff face, was another of his retreats during the same years on the Majella. The trails to both hermitages start in the village, so the town functions as the low point from which the mountain is entered rather than a destination in itself.

That relation is repeated every August 25, when a statue is carried down from the rock to the parish church, where it stays until September before going back: the village receives what the mountain holds. The abdication that followed, an event Dante placed in his Inferno, is the one moment when a hermit's retreat from the world became a subject of it.

What to see in Roccamorice

• Eremo di San Bartolomeo in Legio. Pre-11th-century rock-cut hermitage at 700 meters under a 50-meter cliff, restored in 1250 by the future Pope Celestine V.
• Eremo di Santo Spirito a Majella. Larger hermitage partly cut into the limestone, reached by the same trails that climb from the village into the massif.
• Chiesa di San Donato. Fourteenth-century parish church of San Donato, restored in the seventeenth century, end point of the August 25 procession carrying the hermitage's San Bartolomeo statue down from the rock.

How to get to Roccamorice

Pescara is about 1 h away by road.

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