The best wine towns in Abruzzo

Ofena

Why visit Ofena

Ofena lies fifty kilometers inland from Pescara, in a basin closed to the south by the Gran Sasso wall. The Vestini, an Italic people, held their city of Aufinum here before Rome, and the basin sat on the Via Claudia Nova.

Archaeological remains from that period include large buildings, mosaics and tombs. The walled medieval village grew inside the same basin, its streets, baronial palazzo and eighteenth-century Palazzo Cataldi Madonna set against the older ground of the earlier settlement beneath them.

The heat that the wall traps against the basin floor, the same heat that gave the place its name, is what has kept vines on these slopes since among the earliest recorded plantings of the region's grape, and it is what still draws a wine estate to work the amphitheater at the foot of the glacier above the town. Basin, wall, and vine slope are one and the same geography, read three different ways.

The comune belongs to the national association of wine-producing towns.

What to see in Ofena

• Centro storico. Compact walled medieval village inside its original perimeter, with the baronial palazzo at the centre and late medieval houses along narrow stone streets. Home today to the 420 remaining residents.
• Chiesa di San Nicola di Bari. Parish church in the centro storico, the religious anchor of the medieval settlement, rebuilt over several centuries.
• Convento di San Francesco. Franciscan convent at the edge of the village, with the Monastero dei Cappuccini further out, both marking the early modern religious life of the basin.

How to get to Ofena

There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Pescara is roughly 60 minutes away by road.

Everything we know about Ofena

Controguerra

Why visit Controguerra

The village sits fifteen kilometers from the Adriatic, at the northern edge of Abruzzo, where the valley bends toward the river and the sea. The wine zone that carries the town's name reaches beyond it, spread across five communes sharing the same elbow of land between river and coast.

The reds run at least sixty percent Montepulciano, with Merlot, Cabernet Franc and Cabernet Sauvignon allowed up to fifteen percent; the whites are sixty percent Trebbiano with at least fifteen percent Passerina; the spumante sets Trebbiano against Chardonnay, Verdicchio and Pecorino. The old center holds to its ridge above the valley while the vines and olive groves that support both the wine and oil designations spread on the slopes below, the same ground doing double duty.

The place works because the name on the bottle and the name on the map are the same thing, a small hilltop settlement whose slow-food charter governs an area small enough that vineyard and piazza are never far apart.

The comune belongs to the national association of wine-producing towns.

What to see in Controguerra

• Centro storico. Small hilltop medieval centre on a ridge above the valley, with brick palazzi and the parish church on the central piazza.
• Chiesa di San Salvatore. Parish church on the main piazza, the religious anchor of the medieval ridge village, with a rebuilt eighteenth-century interior.
• Cantine del Controguerra DOC. Family cellars open by appointment, pouring Montepulciano-based reds, Trebbiano-Passerina whites and Pecorino spumante from the same slopes the town gives its name to.

How to get to Controguerra

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 56 minutes away by road.

Everything we know about Controguerra

Rocca San Giovanni

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.

The comune belongs to the national association of wine-producing towns.

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 classical town hall alongside.

How to get to Rocca San Giovanni

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 44 minutes away by road.

Everything we know about Rocca San Giovanni

Tocco da Casauria

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 was founded around 872 under the authority of the abbey nearby, established in fulfilment of a vow made during an imprisonment in Benevento.

The abbey held the relics of Pope Clement I. The town was simply Tocco until 1861, when da Casauria was added to honour 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.

The comune belongs to the national association of wine-producing towns.

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. Built between 1187 and 1220 under Frederick II, destroyed by the 1456 earthquake and rebuilt in Renaissance style, dominating the centro storico.
• Chiesa di Sant'Eustachio. Main church of Tocco, built in the 18th century and named for the town's patron, with the statue of the saint inside.

How to get to Tocco da Casauria

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 47 minutes away by road.

Everything we know about Tocco da Casauria

Crecchio

Why visit Crecchio

Crecchio is a hill town at 209 meters in the band of low ridges that runs from the Adriatic coast inland to the foothills of the Maiella. The Castello Ducale at its center is the reason it appears in textbooks.

On the night of 9 September 1943, after the armistice with the Allies was announced, King Vittorio Emanuele III, Queen Elena, and Crown Prince Umberto fled Rome and stopped at the De Riseis castle for a single night before reaching the port of Ortona and sailing for Brindisi. For those hours Crecchio was effectively the capital of Italy.

The castle was bombed by the Allies later in the war and reconstructed afterward, respecting its original Lombard, Norman, and Aragonese stratification. It now houses the Museo Archeologico dell'Abruzzo Bizantino e Altomedievale, which collects sixth- and seventh-century material from the surrounding territory.

The comune belongs to the national association of wine-producing towns.

What to see in Crecchio

• Castello Ducale De Riseis-D'Aragona. Lombard core from the eighth century, Norman and Aragonese reworkings, four corner towers, host to the fleeing royal family on 9 September 1943.
• Museo Archeologico dell'Abruzzo Bizantino e Altomedievale. Inside the castle, displays Lombard and Byzantine grave goods, ceramics, and weapons from the sixth and seventh centuries.
• Centro storico. Medieval walled core preserved around the castle, narrow lanes and stone houses descending toward the open valley.

How to get to Crecchio

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 40 minutes away by road.

Everything we know about Crecchio

Miglianico

Why visit Miglianico

Miglianico sits at 125 meters in the foothills of the Apennines, fifteen kilometers from Pescara and from the Adriatic coast. The village grew up around a tenth-century rocca built to defend the locals from Saracen raids, and the Norman Baroni Valignani held it through the medieval period; their fortified family chapel later became the sanctuary on the hilltop, its current form shaped by an eighteenth-century interior and a twentieth-century extension.

The centro storico still carries that layered history: a fifteenth-century castle stands on the ruins of the old rocca, and a small votive church built against plague sits among the original parish structures, all within reach of the hill's edge where the vines take over. The wine designations grown on the surrounding slopes, Montepulciano d'Abruzzo DOC, Cerasuolo d'Abruzzo DOC, Trebbiano d'Abruzzo DOC and Terre di Chieti IGT, explain why the cooperative cellar sits at the center of the local economy and identity.

The patron feast on 27 July drew the painter Francesco Paolo Michetti to record its scenes, working here under Gabriele d'Annunzio's eye. What holds the village together, from the rocca's ruins to the sanctuary's extension to the vine rows below, is a place defended, rebuilt and cultivated on the same low hill for centuries, still oriented toward the horizon of vineyards it sits above.

The comune belongs to the national association of wine-producing towns.

What to see in Miglianico

• Santuario di San Pantaleone. Former Valignani family chapel raised to sanctuary status, with eighteenth-century decoration and a twentieth-century extension on the village hilltop.
• Castello Masci. Fifteenth-century castle in the centro storico, built on the ruins of the medieval Valignani rocca that defended the village from Saracen raids.
• Chiesa di San Rocco. Small votive church inside the old village, traditionally invoked against plague, one of the original parish structures.

How to get to Miglianico

There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Pescara is roughly 25 minutes away by road.

Everything we know about Miglianico

Loreto Aprutino

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 after Italian unification in 1863.

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.

The comune belongs to the national association of wine-producing towns.

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 after 1863, 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

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 38 minutes away by road.

Everything we know about Loreto Aprutino

Città Sant'Angelo

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 thirteenth century, runs forty-seven meters along its 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 carries four institutional signals at once: Borghi più belli, Cittaslow, Città del Vino, Città dell'Olio.

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

The comune belongs to the national association of wine-producing towns.

What to see in Città Sant'Angelo

• Collegiata di San Michele Arcangelo. Thirteenth-century church with a forty-seven meter portico, a 1326 portal, and a double organ of 1,218 pipes restored in 2023.
• 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

There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Pescara is roughly 25 minutes away by road.

Everything we know about Città Sant'Angelo