The best towns inside a national park that have a serious restaurant in Abruzzo
Abruzzo is the most wooded, most vertical stretch of central Italy, and its towns are built out of the mountain they stand on: pale Maiella limestone, heavy lintels, streets that climb. The cooking follows the altitude. Lamb and mutton, pecorino aged in the high pastures, chitarra cut on a wire frame, saffron from the Navelli plain, wild herbs and cured pork from villages that still slaughter in winter. Autumn brings mushrooms and truffles, late spring brings the flocks back up the old drove roads, and winter brings snow deep enough that some of these places are as much ski towns as farming ones. It is one of the few parts of Italy where a serious restaurant is likely to sit inside a protected wilderness rather than beside a beach.
Most visitors to Abruzzo arrive through L'Aquila or drive straight to the Parco Nazionale d'Abruzzo, Lazio e Molise for the bears and the beech forest, and the villages around Pescasseroli fill accordingly in August and over the ski holidays. The park deserves the attention: the wildlife is real, the trails are properly maintained, and the visitor centres do good work. But a lot of people see the same loop, eat at the same handful of tables near the trailheads, and leave with the impression that eating well in the mountains here means a plate of grilled meat and a jug of red.
The parks are far bigger than that loop. The Maiella and the Gran Sasso ranges hold their own towns, some of them with baroque squares, wrought-iron workshops and pastry traditions that predate the parks by centuries, and the kitchens in them are ambitious. These are the places where the protected landscape and a properly reviewed restaurant occupy the same postcode, and fewer people make the drive.
Of the 73 communes we have mapped in Abruzzo, 7 qualify as towns inside a national park with a serious restaurant: each sits inside a national park, and each holds a restaurant listed by the most demanding of the guides. The smallest, Rivisondoli, has 676 residents.
If you are still choosing, we have also written The best hidden towns with a serious restaurant in Abruzzo and The best hidden towns inside a national park that eat well within 90 minutes of Pescara.
Rivisondoli
Why visit Rivisondoli
Rivisondoli sits on the flank of Monte Calvario, looking down at the plateau that runs north toward Roccaraso. The town was first recorded in 724 in a diploma of Grimoald II, Duke of Benevento, and grew in the 12th century along the Via degli Abruzzi, the military and trade route across the central Apennines.
It was once known for its weapons production. The 1792 fire destroyed most of the village, and the opening of the Sulmona-Isernia railway in the 19th century turned it toward tourism rather than trade.
The Italian royal family kept a residence here in 1913. Rivisondoli and Roccaraso face each other across the Cinque Miglia plateau, close enough that their ski slopes were joined into one domain and their names are now said together.
The older village, rebuilt twice, climbs one flank of the mountain while the plateau below stays open and treeless, the same ground that once slowed traders and caravans on the route through the Apennines. What began as a stop on a military road became, after fire and war remade the town twice, a place oriented instead toward winter visitors and a single night in January.
Da Giocondo have been named by a guide.
What to see in Rivisondoli
- Alto Sangro ski area. The lift network runs between 1,309 and 2,142 meters, joining Rivisondoli's slopes to Roccaraso's across the open plateau.
- Presepe Vivente. Hundreds of villagers in period costume take the hillside outside town for the performance, the cast spread across the open ground rather than a stage.
- Altopiano delle Cinque Miglia. Treeless and averaging 1,250 meters, the plateau in the Alto Sangro is prone to extreme winter winds, a stretch that historically caught travelers unprepared.
How to get to Rivisondoli
Pescara is roughly 89 minutes away by road.
Our tip
December through March is the season the town runs on. The Alto Sangro lifts open, weekend numbers multiply, and the Cinque Miglia plateau north of town becomes the cross-country skiing route. The January 5 Presepe Vivente draws the biggest single crowd of the year.
Pescocostanzo
Why visit Pescocostanzo
Pescocostanzo sits at 1,395 meters at the southern edge of the Quarto Grande plateau, the high karst basin above the Sangro valley. The town was reshaped between 1456 and the eighteenth century under the Capua family and a generation of Lombard masons who arrived to build for them.
The plan is unusually regular for a mountain commune: a grid of stone houses oriented to the wind, surrounded by woods and pasture. The Collegiata di Santa Maria del Colle, restructured by Cosimo Fanzago in the seventeenth century, is one of the rare five-nave churches in Abruzzo.
Its wrought iron Chapel of the Sacrament gate, made by Sante di Rocco between 1699 and 1707, is the masterpiece of local ironwork. Bobbin lace, merletto al tombolo, is still made here.
The Museo del Merletto a Tombolo inside Palazzo Fanzago shows the technique and the patterns. Filigree gold, carved wood, and lace are still sold on the Corso Roma.
La Corniola, Essentia have been named by a guide.
What to see in Pescocostanzo
- Collegiata di Santa Maria del Colle. Five-nave church begun in the late Middle Ages and remodeled by Cosimo Fanzago in the seventeenth century.
- Museo del Merletto a Tombolo. Inside Palazzo Fanzago, displays the local bobbin lace tradition with patterns, tools, and live demonstrations.
- Palazzo Fanzago. Designed by the baroque architect Cosimo Fanzago in 1624, the seat of the lace museum and civic offices.
How to get to Pescocostanzo
Pescara is roughly 84 minutes away by road.
Our tip
December through March brings snow and the ski season, with the Monte Calvario lifts linking to the Alto Sangro system at Roccaraso and Rivisondoli twenty minutes away. June through September is the second season. At 1,395 meters Pescocostanzo rarely crosses twenty-two degrees even in August, and the Bosco di Sant'Antonio offers beech-shaded walks.
Pacentro
Why visit Pacentro
Pacentro sits at 650 meters on a hill spur in the Peligna valley, eight kilometers from Sulmona and inside the Maiella National Park. The Castello Caldora, with its three surviving square towers, dominates the village from the Colle Castello above.
The site has held a castle since the eleventh century; the structure visible today was begun by the Caldora-Cantelmo family in the late fourteenth century and bought by the comune in 1957 and restored. On the first Sunday of September, the Corsa degli Zingari sends barefoot runners down a rocky slope from Monte Ardinghi into the village in honor of the Madonna di Loreto.
The race is documented since the fifteenth century. The other thing people come for is the Ciccone house.
Madonna's paternal grandparents, Gaetano Ciccone and Michelina Di Iulio, emigrated from Pacentro in 1919. The pop singer visited in 2013.
Taverna dei Caldora have been named by a guide.
What to see in Pacentro
- Castello Caldora-Cantelmo. Late fourteenth-century fortress on the Colle Castello, three of its four corner towers still standing, restored after 1957.
- Borgo medievale. Stone houses arranged on terraces below the castle, listed among the Borghi più belli d'Italia, preserved in its medieval plan.
- Chiesa di Santa Maria Maggiore. Sixteenth-century parish church with a baroque interior, holding the Madonna di Loreto honored in the September race.
How to get to Pacentro
Pescara is roughly 69 minutes away by road.
Our tip
May through October is when Pacentro opens. The first Sunday of September brings the Corsa degli Zingari and the biggest crowd of the year, with runners descending barefoot from Monte Ardinghi and the village in procession by evening. July and August can be warm in the valley but the elevation keeps Pacentro itself cooler than Sulmona below.
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.
Our tip
December through March is the season Roccaraso was built for. The Alto Sangro lifts open, the slopes fill, and the town doubles on weekends. June through September is the second season: 1,236 meters means temperatures rarely cross 23 degrees even in August, and the same plateaus that hold the lifts become hiking and pasture country.
Caramanico Terme
Why visit Caramanico Terme
The name carries the Lombard arimannia, a settled clan of the late Middle Ages, and the town grew under the D'Aquino family in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, when the main religious buildings went up. Terme was added to the name in 1960, recognising what had been known and used since at least 1576, when the first chemical analyses of the local waters were recorded.
The village sits between Monte Morrone and the Majella, with the historic core on the hilltop above and the spa lower down, closer to the meeting of the two rivers. The abbey stands apart from both, five kilometers out, a separate outpost from the town it belongs to.
What holds the place together is the water: a medieval settlement, a fourteenth-century noble family's building program, and a twentieth-century name change all trace back to the same springs that first drew analysis in 1576.
Locanda del Barone have been named by a guide.
What to see in Caramanico Terme
- Abbazia di San Tommaso Becket. Romanesque, standing unfinished since work stopped, the walls left mid-build over the older pieve beneath. The distance from the centre keeps it apart from the rest of the town's sights, reached on its own.
- Chiesa di Santa Maria Maggiore. Fifteenth-century church with a Gothic exterior and an ogival portal showing the Coronation of the Virgin dated 1476.
- Terme di Caramanico. The spa complex built around the two springs, with treatment programs for respiratory, ENT, skin and joint conditions organized across the site today.
How to get to Caramanico Terme
Pescara is roughly 61 minutes away by road.
Our tip
The thermal baths run all year and pull a steady winter cure clientele. April through June and September into November are the best hiking months in the Orfento, with cool morning air through the beech wood and the river running fast. July and August are warm in the village but cool in the gorge; the spa's indoor pools are the summer escape. Mercato Settimanale Di Caramanico Terme falls in October.
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.
Our tip
April through October is the open season. May and September are the best months on the terrazza, with the Majella valleys in clear light and the copper workshops at full pace. July and August are warm but the elevation keeps the centro storico cooler than the coast.
Sulmona
Why visit Sulmona
Sulmona sits at 405 meters in the Valle Peligna, at the confluence of the Gizio and Vella rivers, ringed by the Maiella, the Morrone and the Genzana ranges. The Roman poet Ovid was born here in 43 BC and never stopped writing about the salubrity of its water, a claim still made by the town.
Under Frederick II in the 13th century, Sulmona became the capital of the imperial province of Abruzzo and got the aqueduct of Manfred of Swabia, which still defines the long side of Piazza Garibaldi. The town survived two earthquakes, in 1349 and 1456, and emerged as the home of confetti, the sugared-almond confection given at weddings and baptisms.
Confetti Pelino, the best-known house, has been producing in town since 1783. Every July, the Giostra Cavalleresca brings out the city's seven boroughs in Renaissance procession from the Cathedral of San Panfilo, ending in a ring-jousting tournament in Piazza Garibaldi.
Clemente have been named by a guide.
What to see in Sulmona
- Piazza Garibaldi. The town's main piazza, dominated on its long side by the 13th-century aqueduct of Manfred of Swabia, host of the July Giostra Cavalleresca.
- Cattedrale di San Panfilo. Cathedral of the city's patron, the oldest church in Sulmona, starting point of the Giostra historical procession.
- Palazzo dell'Annunziata. Late-Gothic and Renaissance palace on Corso Ovidio with three different facade phases visible, now housing the civic museum.
How to get to Sulmona
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 57 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June is the green season in the Valle Peligna, when the Maiella above the town still holds snow. The last week of July brings the Giostra Cavalleresca, the town's biggest annual gathering. August is hot, mid-thirties at midday, and the centro storico empties between two and six.
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