Comuni Virtuosi
Comuni Virtuosi in Abruzzo
5 towns
Abruzzo has 5 Comuni Virtuosi communes in our index. They cluster in the L'Aquila and Chieti provinces.
The three most recognised in our catalogue are Fara San Martino, Pettorano sul Gizio, and Alfedena. 2 more towns carry the mark alongside them.
Fara San Martino
Province: Chieti · 440 m
A pasta-making town at 440 meters, where the Verde river runs out of a two-meter slot in the Majella wall.
Pettorano sul Gizio
Province: L'Aquila · 656 m
At 656 meters above the Gizio river, a Cantelmo fortress town that guarded the gateway to the Peligna valley for four hundred years.
Alfedena
Province: L'Aquila · 914 m
At 914 meters at the head of the upper Sangro valley, the Samnite Aufidena, with a 15,000-tomb necropolis and a Roman conquest in 298 BC.
Miglianico
Province: Chieti · 125 m
A wine hill town at 125 meters between Pescara and the Adriatic, with the sanctuary of San Pantaleone above an unbroken horizon of vineyards.
Scontrone
Province: L'Aquila · 1,038 m
A 1,038-meter borgo above the Sangro gorge, with two dozen emigration-themed murals and a paleontological site of European importance.
From elsewhere in Italy
Five more towns to discover
Visso
Province: Macerata
The northern Sibillini gate at 607 meters where the Nera meets the Ussita, holding one of two surviving manuscripts of Leopardi's L'Infinito.
Goriano Sicoli
Province: L'Aquila
At 720 meters in the Subequana valley, a medieval village drawn by M.C. Escher in 1929 keeps a May ritual folklorists trace to Demeter.
Ugento
Province: Lecce
A Messapian-Roman town five kilometers from the Ionian, where a Baroque castle sits on the walls of the ancient city of Ozan.
Fontanellato
Province: Parma
A Parma-plain town built around the Rocca Sanvitale, the moated fortress at its center.
Pescina
Province: L'Aquila
A Marsica town at 735 meters, on the rim of the drained Fucino basin, that lost five thousand of six thousand people in a single morning in 1915.