The Abruzzo coastline north of Pescara is not the prettiest or most interesting due in large part to the familiar story of over development, but it has plenty of full service sandy beaches if that's what you're looking for. However you don't have to stray too far from the sea to find some charming old towns with well-preserved historical centers. There is a succession of hilltop towns, all sitting at several hundred feet above sea level, where coastal residents could quickly seek refuge over the centuries when fast approaching Ottoman raiders were spotted on the horizon.
Before you even cross south into Abruzzo there are many of these elevated towns also in southern Marche that we know very well such as Grottammare Alta, Ripatransone, Acquaviva Picena and Monteprandone.
Barely one mile into Abruzzo the first coastal hill town you come to is Colonnella, rising steeply up from the sea with fabulous views along the coastline as well as inland across the Tronto river valley to all of the nearby Marche towns mentioned above.
Tortoreto Alta is next in line and as you continue south you'll find Atri, Silvi Paese and Città Sant'Angelo, perhaps the most well-known of all of them thanks to its growing population of expatriate residents. We may have missed one or two but these are the hilltop towns we like and know best and they seem to become more interesting as you move south towards Pescara.
Colonnella suffers a little by comparison with the nearby Marche towns which explains why it is the one least impacted by tourism but it has a superb location and is very close to two restaurants that we have visited multiple times, Le Meraviglie del Mare and Zenobi. Colonnella is not an unpleasant place by any means and the very steep road up from Martinsicuro makes for a great climb on a bike, but along the northern border of Abruzzo it is not alone in suffering by comparison with the Marche towns on the opposite side of the Tronto.
As you move west along the ridge line the towns of Controguerra, Ancarano and Sant'Egidio alla Vibrata also lack interest relatively speaking as well as being visually disappointing with too many unattractive concrete buildings; it's hard to get excited by any of these places until you get all the way to Civitella del Tronto.
Tortoreto Alta is a significant improvement on Colonnella, especially if you stay at Villa Mascitti and spend a couple of hours wine tasting at Tenuta Terraviva just below the town, followed by a visit with Simona at the nearby Monaco Olive Oil property to take home some great Abruzzo olive oil.
Tortoreto Alta is quite small but it's very attractive with a much better layout than Colonnella and there always seems to be a great atmosphere in town on those languid summer evenings when everyone is sitting outside along the street eating and drinking. Even if you're a beach person by day, retreating to the quiet of Tortoreto Alta in the evening is for us a much better plan than staying anywhere down below in much noisier Tortoreto Lido or Alba Adriatica.
Tortoreto was a Roman town that was sacked and destroyed like many others in the northern invasions that followed the collapse of the western Roman Empire. Its response was to commence fortifications in the 7th century which then evolved into a castle and defensive walls that took advantage of the town's position at 780 feet above sea level.
It is still characteristically a medieval town with stone arches, an ancient clock tower and the remains of the walls and it has one major advantage to most of the other hilltop towns mentioned in this article. Here you can walk around the entire circumference of the town and enjoy unobstructed views of the coast to the east and the Gran Sasso mountains to the south west as well as the beautiful undulating Abruzzo countryside in between.
The unstable calanchi crevices of northern Abruzzo
Not many hilltop towns have such a continuous panorama and if you're in Tortoreto during the hot summer months the Gran Sasso mountains are best seen at dawn when the morning light hits the mountains and there is very little heat haze.
Atri
The northern Abruzzo countryside is characterized by the presence of calanchi (above photos), especially around Atri where there is a nature reserve of 1,500 acres of them to preserve the biodiversity and natural habitat that these hill formations provide for a wide variety of small mammals and birds, in particular birds of prey like buzzards and kestrels.
Calanchi are basically water eroded clay soils that form unstable sandy ridges and gullies that run down the steep hillsides and are very distinctive in appearance. The two hiking trails in the nature reserve provide a close-up look at the calanchi.
The town of Atri retains its medieval appearance in the attractive centro storico but the major thoroughfares are wider and more scenic than many other medieval centers which can often be narrow and gloomy.
Atri was always a fortress town and had solid defensive walls even before the Romans arrived, which were then improved and re-fortified many times over the centuries as siege weapons became more lethal. As long ago as the 13th century the town was bigger than it is today with 13 gates along the walls, only one of which has survived, that being Porta San Domenico.
Today Atri is a quiet place being further away from the sea than the other towns mentioned and with a higher elevation of almost 1,500 feet. Like many inland towns in Abruzzo there is no obvious reliance on tourism here, it remains a place where locals live and work and retains its authenticity as a result.
That being said there is enough here to interest the casual visitor, including six museums and nine churches in a very compact centro storico that also includes a Ducal Palace containing Roman cisterns. Along the town's perimeter there is a section of the fortress from the 14th century, Rocca Capo d'Atri and nearby is the Belvedere, a long terrace with views over the countryside to the north and the sea to the east. On the terrace there are several large sculptures that remain from an organized event of 30 years ago when ten international sculptors worked on large blocks of Carrara marble and people could observe them as they worked.
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