On Route 16, 8 km South of Pescara. It is ‘Frenchtown’ not ‘Freetown’, two towns in fact, the old piled up on a rock, compact and isolated, the new a line of hotels, a promenade and an attractive sandy beach partly sheltered by green hills. The upper town has an agreeable situation with the sea at its feet, low fertile hills on either side and much subtropical greenery. Nearly all the town’s medieval detail and ornament are gone but the narrow bustling ways still climb among small loggias, piazzas and peepholes, giving surprising views of the coast. Francavilla once had 12 towers but you see only the stumps of them.

The town remembers a local beauty called Domenica Catena, who was snatched in a Saracen raid and placed in the Turkish sultan’s harem. There she acquired such influence over him that she not only became mother of a sultan (Selim II) but was allowed to return to Italy and end her days in a convent. F.P. Michetti, a 19thC genre painter, lived in an old convent on Francavilla’s sloping vineyards and two of his broad canvases of Abruzzo life are displayed in the municipal buildings. He is greatly revered and has inspired an annual painting competition at Francavilla.

Detour – Lanciano
On Route 84, 32 km South East of Francavilla al Mare. People of the Abruzzo hinterland believe in miracles. Lanciano, a market centre on the coastal plain, has its eucharistic miracle in San Francesco’s church: five drops of Christ’s blood and a wafer of his flesh. Together and separately they weigh 20 grams. That was established in the 15thC, says the priest; they have not since been out of the reliquary. Do they work miracles? ‘They cure scepticism’, says the priest.

Roads from Lanciano take you on a roller-coaster ride to the snow-fields and winter sports of the Maiellettal (1,995 m).