San Vito Chietino

There was a port here as early as Roman times, the port of the Frentani at the mouth of the Feltrino, and a piece of it survives at Murata Bassa; in 1385 an Angevin document says that the port, then called Gualdum, belonged to the abbey of San Giovanni in Venere. In the fourteenth century, during the schism, the inhabitants sided with pope Urban VI and the castle was plundered by the antipope's men; the abbot called Lanciano for help, and Lanciano sent an army, scattered the attackers and then had the abbey grant it the fief in perpetual emphyteusis for sixty silver carlini a year. A rescue that ended as a purchase.

At that point Ortona stepped in, afraid for its own maritime supremacy: it got king Ladislas to revoke the permission to rebuild the port, and when Lanciano rebuilt it anyway, Ortona hired a pirate to demolish the works. The pirate took the chance to plunder the town as well. In 1427 it was Saint John of Capestrano who patched together a provisional peace, with the fief held jointly; Lanciano kept it until 1528, when it sold port and fief to one Sancho Lopez. The word Chietino was added to the name in 1863; in 1889 Gabriele D'Annunzio spent some months in a farmhouse on the coast; and on 3 February 1916 an Austro-Hungarian squadron shelled the town until an armed train of the Italian navy forced the ships to break off.