Anversa gave a tragedy its title and a famous lithograph its subject. In 1905 Gabriele D'Annunzio came up here with the philologist Antonio De Nino and was struck by the decline of the Di Sangro, the lords of the place, and by the tall thin ruin of the Norman castle: that ruin is the torch under the bushel of the play he wrote and set here. A quarter of a century later, in 1929, Maurits Cornelis Escher stopped to look at Castrovalva, the hamlet perched on the spur above the gorge, and made the drawing from which the lithograph of that name was born.
The name of the village comes from the Latin ad amnen versus, «towards the river»: the river is the Sagittario, which has cut here the gorges that are now a nature reserve. On the coat of arms two snakes are coiled around a compass, and it is not a whim: this is the land of the Marsi, and marsus once meant a snake charmer. Until after the war the village made pottery — fifteen workshops by the springs of the Cavuto, and majolica that reached as far as Villa d'Este at Tivoli — but when the Cavuto was channelled for a hydroelectric dam the trade collapsed. In 1901 there were nearly two thousand inhabitants; today there are a few hundred.
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📅 Every year, on 16 January
On 16 January Anversa degli Abruzzi celebrates its patron Saint Marcellus, to whom the town's church is dedicated; the territory preserves the necropolises of Cava della Rena and Coccitelle.
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 Anversa degli Abruzzi, but an easy day trip away.
