Loreto Aprutino has 7,619 inhabitants in the hills of the Vestina area, and is one of the olive oil towns of Abruzzo. The name comes from the laurel, which once grew here in abundance; the addition "Aprutino" arrived with the unification of Italy, to tell it apart from the other Loretos, and meant "of the province of Teramo", the ancient Aprutium. Except that in 1927 the province of Pescara was created and Loreto ended up inside it: it carries the name of a province it is no longer in.
Outside the centre stands the church of Santa Maria in Piano, built over a temple of Janus and long disputed between Montecassino and the abbey of Carpineto. Inside is a fifteenth-century fresco cycle, and in the Last Judgement of 1429 a scene that is seen almost nowhere else in Italy: the bridge of the Hair. Over a river of pitch runs a bridge that narrows until it is as thin as a hair; the few souls that manage to cross it find on the other side a ferryman angel, who is Saint Michael. Scholars hear in it an echo of Zoroastrianism.
No events match these filters.
📅 Every year, on the Monday after Pentecost, with an ox ridden by a child dressed as an angel
Loreto Aprutino celebrates Saint Zopito, the town's semi-legendary patron saint, on the Monday after Pentecost. An ox «ridden» by a child dressed as an angel kneels before the saint's statue, in the collegiate church of San Pietro.
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 Loreto Aprutino, but an easy day trip away.
