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Ecomuseo Sangro · Aventino
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The routes

Six ways of crossing the valley

Each route lines up the places that explain one another. Distances are measured from one stop to the next and should be taken as an order of magnitude, not as road directions.

Lake Casoli, its water blue-green, with the snow-covered Maiella behind

From the lake to the sea

The ways of water

You follow the Aventino to where it meets the Sangro, then the Sangro to where it meets the sea. In between: a lake, a marsh turned reserve, a gorge cut into sandstone.

  • 60 km
  • A full day
  • Easy
  • 6 stops
  1. Lake Casoli
  2. The Rio Secco gorges
  3. The Serranella Oasis
  4. “La Biscia” by Nunzio Di Stefano
  5. The Costa dei Trabocchi
  6. The abbey of San Giovanni in Venere
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The great gypsum rock of Gessopalena with the remains of the village on top

The gypsum culture

The soft stone

A rock you can scratch with a fingernail, and which for centuries was house, street, church, oil mill, economy. Then in thirty years it was all over.

  • 17 km
  • Half a day
  • Moderate
  • 5 stops
  1. The gypsum outcrops
  2. The rock-hewn village of Gessopalena
  3. The Gypsum Museum
  4. The gypsum quarries and kilns
  5. La Morgia and “Orizzonti”
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Roccascalegna castle on its sandstone spur, with the village below it

Castles and historic centres

Stone and defence

Four villages grown onto four different rocks — sandstone, limestone, gypsum — and each time a different urban shape.

  • 32 km
  • A full day
  • Moderate
  • 5 stops
  1. The Ducal Castle of Casoli
  2. The historic centre of Casoli
  3. Roccascalegna castle
  4. Altino and its red gold
  5. Torricella Peligna
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The archaeological park of Iuvanum with the mountain behind

Carricini, Samnites, Romans

Before Rome

An Italic sanctuary on a plateau at 1,165 metres, which became a Roman municipium and then a Cistercian monastery. With everything that was there before.

  • 5 km
  • Half a day
  • Easy
  • 4 stops
  1. The archaeological park of Iuvanum
  2. Iuvanum Archaeological Museum
  3. Museum of the History and Transformation of the Landscape
  4. Torricella Peligna
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The Morgia of Gessopalena with the glass installation by Costas Varotsos

The works of Arte Natura

Art in the landscape

Since 1994 Italian and foreign artists have been invited to live in the valley and leave a work behind. Not in a gallery: inside the landscape.

  • 33 km
  • Half a day
  • Easy
  • 5 stops
  1. Arte Natura: a territory as a laboratory
  2. La Morgia and “Orizzonti”
  3. “La Parabola” by Giuliano Giuliani
  4. “La collina degli alberi morti”
  5. “La Biscia” by Nunzio Di Stefano
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The varieties of sweet pepper grown at Altino, with their dialect names

Food and traditions

Red gold and new oil

A vegetable from the Americas that has become a museum, four truffle genotypes saved from an ice age, and oil mills that work by counterweight.

  • 39 km
  • A full day
  • Easy
  • 5 stops
  1. Altino and its red gold
  2. The Sweet Pepper Museum
  3. The Altino Sweet Pepper
  4. The salsicciotto frentano
  5. The truffle of the Sangro Valley
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