Atri

Atri has 11,112 inhabitants on three hills that slope down towards the Adriatic, among the badlands. It is one of the oldest towns in Abruzzo: it struck coins with the letters HAT and a wolf, it exported wine and oil towards Greece, and from here came the Italic family which, having moved to Spain, gave the empire Hadrian and Trajan; Hadrian considered it his second homeland. According to some it is Atri that gave its name to the Adriatic sea, according to others the name comes instead from Adria, in the Veneto.

In 1251 pope Innocent IV gave it the diocese and communal autonomy: Atri had been the first city of the Kingdom to take the Guelph side. In 1305 the cathedral was finished, which inside has the fifteenth-century fresco cycle by Andrea De Litio. In 1393 the city was sold for thirty-five thousand ducats to Antonio Acquaviva, the first of nineteen dukes, and became the capital of a duchy. The port, on the other hand, it lost: it lay at the mouth of the Cerrano, where the tower stands, and that stretch of coast is Pineto's territory today.