Of this church the part that counts is the face: the fourteenth-century doorway and rose window, carved in stone, are all that remains of the medieval building. The rest has been rebuilt and enlarged several times, and even the name has changed: it was Saint Margaret's, then Saint Augustine's, and since 1808 it has been dedicated to Saint Joseph.
What to see
The rose window has radiating spokes and a worked frame, and it stands above a pointed doorway with colonnettes at the sides: these are the two elements that mark the church as a mendicant order's building, put up in the thirteenth century with a single nave and an open truss roof, typical of those who had to get people in for the sermon.
Inside, the look is that of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century rebuildings, and few traces of the original structure remain, among them a small window on the north side. The church was raised to cathedral in 1853, when Vasto had its own bishopric, and today it is a concathedral together with the one in Chieti.
Visiting
The cathedral is in piazza Pudente, in the old town of Vasto, five minutes from the main square; free entry, closed at midday and during services. Twenty minutes.
Our editors' tip
Look closely at the front and find the point where the old stone ends and the later masonry begins: you can see it with the naked eye, because the blocks do not match. It is a building that has kept only its face and changed everything else, and that is a story which in Abruzzo, between earthquakes and reconstructions, repeats itself often.