Casalbordino has 6,303 inhabitants on a hill between the rivers Osento and Sinello, a few kilometres from the Adriatic. The name, so it is said, comes from Roberto Bordinus, the captain of the garrison that defended a monastery: the casale that stood guard over the abbey later became the fortified village. The abbey was Santo Stefano in Rivomaris, on the promontory looking out to sea, and for centuries it controlled the coast between the Trigno and the Sinello; in 1566 a Turkish raid burned it, and it never recovered: today a few perimeter walls are left.
In 1576, after a hailstorm that destroyed everyone's harvest except that of the peasant Alessandro Muzii, who had prayed, it was said that the Madonna had appeared to him. The sanctuary of the Miracoli was built on the spot and the pilgrimage became one of the largest in Abruzzo. In 1889 Gabriele D'Annunzio came to see it, was struck by the intensity of the pilgrims and put the scene into his novel Il trionfo della morte; the village bell tower, incidentally, was completed by his own brother-in-law, the engineer Antonino Liberi. Then came the war: between 1940 and 1943 Casalbordino was one of the Abruzzese comuni assigned the civil internment of foreign Jewish refugees, and after the armistice all eight of them, with German troops in the area, managed to escape and reach the already liberated south.
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📅 Every year, on the last Sunday of June, in the town of the Madonna dei Miracoli
Casalbordino celebrates Saint Stephen on the last Sunday of June, in the Abbey of Santo Stefano in Rivomaris. The town is tied to the apparition of the Madonna dei Miracoli, which took place in 1576 before the farmer Alessandro Muzi.
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 Casalbordino, but an easy day trip away.
