«Vasto» does not mean vast. It comes from the Lombard guasto, that is gastaldato, the district into which the Lombards divided the land: the medieval town grew out of two guasti side by side, the Guasto d'Aymone and the Guasto Gisone, joined into one nucleus in the fourteenth century, and the local dialect, which does not pronounce the g, did the rest. The name is masculine and takes the article — Il Vasto — like very few cities in the world, Il Cairo and Il Pireo; hence the form Città del Vasto is still used. Before the Lombards there was Histonium, a Roman municipium from 91 BC, an Adriatic port the Greeks called Histónion, «the headland above the sea».
From the belvedere the eye falls on that headland and on the golden gulf, the coast running down to Punta Aderci, a reserve of cliffs and wild beaches among the finest on the Adriatic. The upper town is that of the d'Avalos, who made it the centre of their possessions and in 1710 obtained the title of City for it: their palace, with its Neapolitan gardens, is still the drawing room. Gabriele Rossetti was born here in 1783, poet and exile, father of the Pre-Raphaelite Dante Gabriel. Below, Vasto Marina lines up its beach clubs and its trabocchi. At table there is only one dogma: brodetto alla vastese, cooked in the earthenware pot and never stirred. San Salvo and Molise are ten minutes away.
Punta Aderci Reserve · Duomo di Vasto · Castello Caldoresco and 18 more
24 places to stay · top rated: Vasto Aparthotel 9.3 · Baia Delphis Resort 9.3
Festivals, food fairs and events throughout the year.
Nearest airport: Pescara, 56 km away
Vasto is part of 🍷 Food & wine 🏖️ Seaside
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📅 Every year, on 29 September
Protector of Vasto since the seventeenth century, Saint Michael became so officially in 1837, when prayers to him were credited with turning aside the typhus and malarial fevers rising from the coast.
Punta Aderci Reserve Established in 1998, this 285-hectare coastal reserve features sandy dunes and the towering Punta Penna lighth 
Duomo di Vasto The church that kept only its face: a fourteenth-century doorway and rose window. 
Castello Caldoresco Giacomo Caldora's fifteenth-century fortress in Vasto, with almond-shaped bastions facing piazza Rossetti. chiesa di Santa Maria Maggiore The mother church of Vasto's old town, with the tallest bell tower in the city and canvases by Solimena. Faro di Punta Penna Vasto's 70-metre lighthouse, the second tallest in Italy after Genoa's Lanterna, with 307 steps to the top. Palazzo d'Avalos The residence of the Marquises of Vasto, with a sixteenth-century front and the town's civic museums. 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 Vasto, but an easy day trip away.
