Rocca San Giovanni e la Costa dei Trabocchi

Rocca San Giovanni sits at 154 metres above sea level, on a rocky hill wedged between the mouths of the Sangro river and the Feltrino stream. From that position, the village in the province of Chieti looks out over the Adriatic at a distance sufficient to take in the coastline in its entirety, without being swallowed by it. The town has a population of a few thousand and a compact urban fabric, where the town hall faces a square that retains the scale of a centre designed for those who live there, not for those passing through.

The stretch of coastline at its feet belongs to the Costa dei Trabocchi (Trabocchi Coast), the Abruzzo section of the Adriatic between Ortona and Vasto. The name comes from the wooden pile-dwelling structures that still dot the shore: trabocchi are ancient fishing machines, built directly on the rocks with a system of beams, walkways and nets lowered sheer over the water. Each structure differs from the next in size and configuration, shaped over the centuries to the contours of the rock it stands on. Seen from above, from the brow of the hill at Rocca San Giovanni, they form an irregular sequence along the coast, like punctuation on a line written by the sea.

This double perspective — the village up on the height, the shoreline down below — defines the character of the place. This is not a seaside resort in the ordinary sense: the beach exists, but the logic of the place is vertical, layered between hillside and water. Those who climb up to the village find narrow streets, stone architecture that has resisted renewal beyond what was necessary, and a silence that in the middle hours of the day becomes almost physical. Those who descend toward the coast pass through a landscape where Mediterranean vegetation follows the slope down to the rocks.

The Costa dei Trabocchi can today be travelled along a cycle path built in part on the disused railway line that once ran parallel to the sea. This linear route connects several towns along the Chieti coastline and allows visitors to approach the trabocchi from land, at close range, reading the structure of each machine in its full constructive complexity. Rocca San Giovanni takes its place in this system as a point of orientation on the height, a visual landmark for those travelling the coast and a place to pause for those who prefer to watch the sea from a distance rather than be immersed in it.