Civitella del Tronto

Civitella del Tronto (hereafter Civitella; yes, there are other Civitella's in Italy) is a town near us and a favorite place of mine. The changing photographs on the city's website give an idea of its excellent military position which was the reason for the location of most Italian hill towns. Imagine the photographs with Civitella with only cultivated fields near it. One of the photographs is a view to the ocean, for most of the life of Civitella nothing existed between it and the ocean except similar walled hill towns.
Civitella was also a Papal colony and part of the Papal states. Civitella was the last city to surrender during the war for the unification of Italy. That surrender is sometimes recorded as March 20, 1861 but is usually celebrated on March 17.
As an aside, most of Italy is celebrating the 150th anniversary of unification this year though Luis Durnwalder, the president of the ruling council of Bolzano province of the Sud Tirole region has said it is not an event to celebrate for his area. This is something akin to one of the US states opting out of celebrating the fourth of July. Here everyone is so used to this semi-autonomous region expressing its love of all things Germanic that it was hardly noticed. If you've connected on the hyperlink you can see that Mr. Durnwalder is not the most Italian looking politician you've ever seen.
But back to Civitella, it always reminds me of San Gimignano, a small tourist attraction a short distance from Sienna. I had the opportunity to see San Gimignano many times during the early 1970's. When we were bored or had nothing else to do we would drive to Florence, Sienna or San Gimignano to while away a Saturday afternoon. At that time I thought it was very crowded but apparently today it receives many times the visitors. Civitella attracts a fair number of European visitors in the summer and very, very few Americans. I have been there many times and have never seen another American though a review of the sign in book at the fortress museum reveals a few American visitors.
Other than June, July and August, Civitella has few visitors. A trip there during the off season lets you wander around very narrow old cobblestone streets where you will meet only a few locals and no vehicles as all but small emergency vehicles are stopped at the city gate. The crooked, narrow streets, more properly alleys, with relatively high buildings make it usually a shadowy dark walk. It reminds me of walking in the residential areas of Venice before the tourist explosion. Tourist restaurants and local restaurants remain open but have few patrons and lots of atmosphere. It doesn't take much imagination to understand that what you are seeing is how things were hundreds of years ago. We have gone there on several occasions and seen no other tourists or only a handful at the fortress museum. As you can probably tell, I highly recommend it if you come to Italy and have time for a detour or want to see something without the usual set of tourists. One of my great fears is that we see it in a television tour guide's list of undiscovered sights.
Other than to wander the old streets of town, the main site is the museum of the fortress. I strongly urge you to use the hyperlink to look at the site and to have Google translate activated. It is a very well preserved fortress and in recent years the Italian government has modernized the museum to make it worth a trip. Admittedly, almost all of the museum relates to military history but the reason for the existence of all of the Italian hill towns was to provide security from successive waves of invading armies after the fall of Rome. Civitella is interesting because you can see where sentries of the fort could see along all of the valleys approaching the town and, if necessary, alert the people working the crops to get within the walls of the city. The extremely good strategic location is much more obvious on top of the fort than when you approach it.
Another curious matter is the very good view of the ocean. Probably, until recent times, very few of the people of Civitella ever visited the ocean but they have a great view of it. In a straight line, Civitella is about 13 or 14 miles from the ocean; a distance that made travel difficult and dangerous. With the arrival of the Fiat 500 in 1957 that all was about to change. I have met many people from similar hill towns who never walked on a beach or put the foot in the ocean until the 1960's.
If you travel to Civitella there are several restaurants available. One is a stand out, good enough to rate two spoons and forks in the Michelin Red Guide for Italy, Zunica. We have eaten there several times and found the food to be consistently excellent. While other food is available, the restaurant serves a changing menu of local, fresh specialties that won't be found other places. It also has a few rooms to let if you want to spend the night in a medieval hill town, we have not stayed there but I looked at a room once and thought it seemed very clean.
Civitella has been a favorite of mine for more than 30 years for its well preserved character and lack of tourists. I highly recommend it.