Pineto

Pineto has 14,631 inhabitants on the coast of the Teramo province, and it earned its name in a century: in the twenties the Filiani family had two great pine woods planted, one along the shore and one on the hills, and the effect on the landscape was such that the whole coastal strip came to be called that. Before, it was Villa Filiani, a handful of houses that had grown up around the coast road and the station; the real chief town was six kilometres inland, on the hill of Mutignano, and it stayed there until 1930, when the town hall came down to the sea.

On the Cerrano ditch, where the tower stands today, was for centuries the port of Atri. The tower was destroyed in 1447 by the Venetian fleet at war with the Angevins, and its remains ended up sold to private owners; they rebuilt it in 1582, within the system of coastal towers of the Kingdom of Naples, to watch whoever came in from the sea. The port, on the other hand, never came back: a small landing place further south took over, and the coast had to wait for the nineteenth century and the first roads to start filling up again.