Lanciano keeps what tradition holds to be the first Eucharistic miracle in Church history: in the eighth century, the account goes, host and wine turned to flesh and blood in a doubting monk's hands; the relics are venerated in San Francesco, a pilgrimage goal from across the world. The city of the Frentani was for centuries one of the Kingdom's great free-fair markets.
The September Feasts and the Mastrogiurato pageant revive that season. The centre, between Gothic Santa Maria Maggiore and the Montanare towers, deserves the slow stop that inland Abruzzo knows how to impose.
Near Lanciano
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
