In Ortona's cathedral rest, since 1258, the relics of the apostle Thomas, brought from a Greek island by an Ortonese captain: a primacy of faith that makes the town a small Adriatic sanctuary. Recent history is harsher: in December 1943 the house-by-house battle between Germans and Canadians earned it the name "Stalingrad of Italy", and the Canadian war cemetery on the Moro river remembers.
The Aragonese castle sheer above the sea, the eastern promenade and the trabocchi of the coast southward — restaurants on stilts — return today an Ortona of Montepulciano wine, harbour and wide horizons.
Near Ortona
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
