Atessa has 10,761 inhabitants in the lower valley of the Sangro, and it is the largest comune of the province of Chieti by area. The name is the sum of two villages: Ate and Tixa, two Lombard settlements that stood at the two ends of a crescent-shaped hill and that welded together over the centuries. You can still see it: they are the quarters of San Michele and Santa Croce, each with its streets coiled in a spiral around its own high point, and in the middle, holding them together, the duomo of San Leucio.
The church appears in the documents from 1059, when pope Nicholas II confirmed to the bishop of Chieti his possessions; on the portal there is the date of the gothic restoration, 1312, with the cross-bearing lamb and the symbols of the four evangelists — which before a twentieth-century remaking stood above the rose window. The town lost 135 men in the First World War, and then went hungry until, in the seventies, the industry of the Val di Sangro changed its life within a couple of decades.
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📅 Every year, on 11 January; ancient traditions and legends also link the town to Saint Martin of Abruzzo, born here
Atessa celebrates Saint Leucius on 11 January, in the cathedral dedicated to him. Very ancient traditions and legends also link the town to its other protector, Saint Martin of Abruzzo, a native of Atessa itself.
Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Outside Atessa, but an easy day trip away.
