A region that drops from almost three thousand metres to sea level in about an hour's drive. Let's walk it, top to bottom.
Schematic, not to scale.
2,912 mCorno Grande
The roof
The highest peak of the Apennines, the mountain spine of Italy.
Limestone, glacier-cut ridges, snow well into summer. Around it, the Gran Sasso national park: wolves, golden eagles and Apennine chamois. It looks like the Alps. It's ninety minutes from Rome.
Photo slotOn the trail to Corno Grande, Gran Sasso.
1,800 mCampo Imperatore
Little Tibet
A high plateau about twenty kilometres long, nicknamed Italy's Little Tibet.
Horses, cattle and sheep graze it all summer. At the roadside refuges you buy raw arrosticini from the butcher's counter, grab a bag of charcoal and grill them yourself on public fornacelle, with a view that doesn't look like Europe at all.
Photo slotA mountain lake on Campo Imperatore, Corno Grande behind.
1,460 mRocca Calascio
A castle in the clouds
One of the highest fortresses in Italy: a stone tower on a bare ridge.
Film crews love it. On winter mornings the valley fills with fog and the castle floats above it. Walk up at sunset and you'll understand why people from here never really leave.
Photo slotRocca Calascio under winter snow.
1,250 mSanto Stefano di Sessanio
The wool village
A medieval stone village that grew rich selling wool to Renaissance Florence.
The money came from sheep, like everything up here. Today it's famous for tiny lentils, narrow stone alleys and a silence London can't imagine.
Photo slotSanto Stefano di Sessanio, snow on the mountains behind.
714 mL'Aquila
The sheep road
For centuries, every autumn, shepherds walked their flocks from these mountains to the plains of Puglia. Every spring, they walked back.
They followed tratturi: wide grass roads, some of them a hundred metres across. The great one, the Tratturo Magno, ran roughly 240 km from L'Aquila to Foggia. This seasonal migration, the transumanza, is now on UNESCO's intangible heritage list. Somewhere along those roads, around a fire, someone cut the meat small and put it on a stick.
Photo slotA flock grazing below the Gran Sasso, shepherd behind.
0 mCosta dei Trabocchi
Then the sea
Wooden fishing machines on stilts, sticking out over the Adriatic.
They're called trabocchi: platforms with long arms that lower huge nets into the water. Some are restaurants now. Eat raw fish there at lunch, drive back up the mountain, eat arrosticini for dinner. That's an Abruzzo day.
Photo slotA trabocco from above, nets over the Adriatic.
I need to go there.
Good. Here's how, from London.
Fly direct
Pescara is Abruzzo's airport. Check for seasonal direct flights from London, about two and a half hours.
Via Rome
Fly to Rome, then drive or take a coach east. Around two hours to L'Aquila or the coast.
When
June for wildflowers on the plateau. September for harvest and village festivals. Winter if you ski.
