Without a car
Abruzzo by train
30 towns
Towns in this region where we confirmed an active station. Check the timetable before you go: a station on the map is not the same as a useful service.
Alba Adriatica
Province: Teramo · 5 m
The northernmost of the Teramo coast's seven sisters, a 1956 spin-off from Tortoreto with a fine-sand beach known as the Spiaggia d'Argento.
Anversa degli Abruzzi
Province: L'Aquila · 604 m
At 604 meters above the Sagittario Gorges, a cliff village built around a Norman castle rebuilt by the Counts of Sangro.
Archi
Province: Chieti · 492 m
A 492-meter rocky spur called the Terrazza sul Sangro, fief of del Balzo, Cantelmo, Colonna and Carafa, now Città del Tartufo and Città dell'Olio.
Balsorano
Province: L'Aquila · 359 m
A pentagonal fortress above the Liri river that became a backdrop for 1970s Italian horror cinema.
Campo di Giove
Province: L'Aquila · 1,064 m
At 1,064 meters under the southwestern Maiella, the highest village in the park, named for a Roman temple to Jupiter.
Capistrello
Province: L'Aquila · 734 m
At 734 meters where the upper Liri valley meets the Marsica, the village where an emperor's tunnel emptied a lake into a river.
Carsoli
Province: L'Aquila · 616 m
A 616-meter mountain town in the Marsica, built next to the ruins of a 4th-century BC Roman fortress town.
Castel di Sangro
Province: L'Aquila · 805 m
At 805 meters where the Sangro meets the Zittola, a Samnite-Roman town whose amateur football club reached Serie B and whose hilltop was fought over in 1943.
Civita d'Antino
Province: L'Aquila · 904 m
At 904 meters above the Roveto valley, the ancient Marsi town that became a Danish painters' colony from 1883 until the 1915 earthquake.
Controguerra
Province: Teramo · 267 m
A 267-meter hill village whose name is legal shorthand for a small Montepulciano and Trebbiano-Passerina DOC.
Crecchio
Province: Chieti · 209 m
A 209-meter hill town between the Adriatic and the Maiella, capital of Italy for one night in 1943 when the king slept in its castle.
Giulianova
Province: Teramo · 68 m
Coastal town split between hilltop Paese at 68 meters and the Lido below, one rebuilt as a Renaissance ideal city, the other grown around a working fishing fleet.
Goriano Sicoli
Province: L'Aquila · 720 m
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.
Guardiagrele
Province: Chieti · 576 m
The 576-meter terrazza d'Abruzzo on the Majella's foothills, hometown of fifteenth-century goldsmith Nicola da Guardiagrele and seat of the Majella park.
L'Aquila
Province: L'Aquila · 721 m
The regional capital at 721 meters, founded by Frederick II around 1240 and still reconstructing after the 2009 earthquake.
Loreto Aprutino
Province: Pescara · 290 m
A hilltop town at 290 meters in the Aprutino olive country, with a fourteenth-century Judgment fresco and a Castelli majolica collection.
Manoppello
Province: Pescara · 257 m
A hill town above the Pescara river, custodian since 1620 of the byssus veil known as the Volto Santo.
Pescina
Province: L'Aquila · 735 m
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.
Pineto
Province: Teramo · 4 m
A planned twentieth-century beach town named for D'Annunzio's poem, with the sixteenth-century Cerrano tower anchoring Abruzzo's first marine protected area.
Rocca San Giovanni
Province: Chieti · 155 m
A walled hill town at 155 meters, founded around 1060 by an abbot guarding the Abbey of San Giovanni in Venere.
Roccacasale
Province: L'Aquila · 450 m
A village of 597 under the ruins of a castle blown up by Napoleon's army in 1803.
Roccaraso
Province: L'Aquila · 1,236 m
At 1,236 meters, the south of Italy's largest ski resort, leveled in 1943 and rebuilt from rubble.
Roseto degli Abruzzi
Province: Teramo · 8 m
An Adriatic beach town of 25,500 with ten kilometers of low-rise sand, a hilltop frazione at 285 meters, and Blue Flags since 1995.
Sante Marie
Province: L'Aquila · 950 m
A 950-meter Marsica village and the trailhead of the Cammino dei Briganti, the seven-day brigand trail through the Cartore band's territory.
Scurcola Marsicana
Province: L'Aquila · 700 m
At 700 meters below Monte San Nicola, the field where a medieval battle ended Swabian power in southern Italy.
Silvi
Province: Teramo · 242 m
A split town on the Teramo coast, medieval Silvi Paese at 242 meters above a nine-kilometer beach that built itself on licorice in the 1930s.
Sulmona
Province: L'Aquila · 405 m
At 405 meters in the Valle Peligna, birthplace of Ovid in 43 BC and home of the sugared-almond confetti industry since the 14th century.
Tagliacozzo
Province: L'Aquila · 740 m
A Marsica town at 740 meters, built around a ducal palace and a battle that once decided the fate of southern Italy.
Tocco da Casauria
Province: Pescara · 356 m
A 356-meter hill town between the Pescara river and the Maiella, built around a Carolingian abbey and an herb liqueur called Centerba.
Vasto
Province: Chieti · 144 m
At 144 meters on a hill above the Adriatic, Vasto is home of the brodetto vastese, invented in 1800.
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From elsewhere in Italy
Five more towns to discover
Campi Salentina
Province: Lecce
A Salento plain town fifteen kilometers north of Lecce, rebuilt after the Saracen raids of 926 and later raised to a marquisate.
Loreto Aprutino
Province: Pescara
A hilltop town at 290 meters in the Aprutino olive country, with a fourteenth-century Judgment fresco and a Castelli majolica collection.
Ascea
Province: Salerno
Two villages, a hilltown at 230 meters and a Cilento marina, with Parmenides and Zeno's Eleatic school in the ruins of Greek Velia below.
Vico del Gargano
Province: Foggia
A Gargano hill town at 445 meters where a Norman castle, a kiss alley, and DOP citrus terraces step down toward the Adriatic.
Mantova
Province: Mantova
A Gonzaga capital at 19 meters, encircled on three sides by lakes the Mincio formed in the twelfth century, UNESCO-listed together with Sabbioneta since 2008.