Montesilvano

Montesilvano is two towns in one, and it took a railway and a fascist raid to settle which one counted more. The old village stands on the hill, where the name was born: from Silvanus, the god of the woods, who had a temple here. The seafront, instead, was a malarial strip that official reports of the Kingdom described as a wretched village, where average life expectancy did not reach forty; then in 1863 the Adriatic railway arrived, and the new town grew around the station. In 1928 the two Montesilvanos were reunited, but only after the blackshirts had stormed the town hall on the hill and carried the registers and the furniture down to the sea: the comune never went back up.

Today it is the second comune of the province and the third in Abruzzo, joined to Pescara with no break in between: the great beach of the Abruzzo Adriatic, kilometres of serviced sand, family hotels and a population that doubles in summer. It is also one of the busiest conference and sports hubs in the region. In 2014 its citizens voted to merge with Pescara and Spoltore into a single city: the law exists, the date has been put off more than once. A curiosity: Dean Martin's father came from here. The Gran Sasso and the inland villages are an hour away, the Costa dei Trabocchi half an hour, Pescara ten minutes along the seafront by bike.