John Fort

Train ride to Sulmona and Castel di Sangro

[This article first appeared in "Wanted in Rome" in January 2005]

An early start today to visit the wild and spectacular heart of Italy, the Abruzzo, to the east of Rome.

The commuters rush past in their thousands on their way to work, but the 7.45 from Rome to Pescara is very peaceful. It is best to read the newspaper for the first forty minutes, as the countryside between Rome and Bagni di Tivoli is the opposite of lovely, but then begins the climb up to Tivoli itself, with spectacular views down into the chasm of the Villa Gregoriana, due to reopen refurbished in May of 2005.

The line rises steadily for more or less for the next two hours, through countryside of astonishing wildness, bearing in mind that Rome is so still so near.

Vicovaro comes up on the left, with its fine Baroque church and splendid great, white Palazzo Cenci Bolognetti, and then follows a dizzying series of tunnels and viaducts as the train ducks to and fro under the columns of the Autostrada A24. Around Carsoli the country opens up slightly, and this becomes the pattern - a series of cuttings, tunnels and uplands, some desolate, which lead past Tagliacozzo and on to Avezzano. This city, sadly devastated by a terrible earthquake in 1915 and then by bombardments in 1944, sits at the edge of the vast fertile plain created from the bed of the Lago del Fucino, once the third largest lake in Italy (19 km x 10 km), which the emperor Claudius unsuccessfully tried to drain in the first century AD, an enterprise finally achieved by the Torlonia family in 1875.

Further round the former edge of the lake is Celano, with the handsome four-towered Castello Piccolomini (ca 1460) dominating from above, and Pescina, the birthplace of Cardinal Mazarin (1602) and Ignazio Silone (1900), after which the train dives into further cuttings and tunnels before climbing to almost 900m at Cocullo and emerging at Goriano Siculi, to begin the long descent to Sulmona, along a twisting and hair-raising route cut high on the side of mountain, giving a dramatic panorama over the plain hundreds of metres below.

At Sulmona station the traveller must make a fast decision, either just to visit the town, which is the easy thing to do, or else to jump on the one-coach train to Castel di Sangro, Isernia and Naples, thereby enjoying by far the most spectacular part of this itinerary: this option still gives the possibility of visiting the city later in the day, but means getting back to Rome at about 8.30 pm. A fast decision, because the little train waits for the passengers from Rome, but only for eight or nine minutes.

Sulmona has as its backdrop the wild and spectacular Parco Nazionale della Majella, whose highest peak, Monte Amaro rises to 2793 m. The train takes off up, turning this way and that, across viaducts and through tunnels beautifully built in cut stone, up seemingly perpendicular mountain sides, into a land of severe mountains skirted by beech woods and then on across a broad upland, the Piana di Palena. The train is carried across on a raised causeway, as here in winter there is deep snow which melts in spring, creating a broad lake which gradually dries out as summer advances, giving way to an amazing display of flowers. At the end of the plain is Roccaraso, the ski resort, and a bit further on Castel di Sangro, an ancient town but drastically damaged by German mines in 1943. This is the furthest point of this expedition, with one and a half hours to pass before the return train arrives; providentially, there is an excellent trattoria on the platform, with ambitions, judging by the nettle gnocchi and frog risotto featuring on the menu along with what can normally be expected.

Back in Sulmona, there is a Rome train after seven minutes or else after two hours and twenty minutes, which is just about long enough to have a look round.

The city has two claims to fame, firstly as the birthplace of the Latin poet Ovid, whose life was so scandalous that the emperor Augustus banished him to the Black Sea where he pined to death, and secondly as the world centre of the sugared almond, the confetto, a delicacy dating back to Roman times, which here comes not only in bland whites, blues, pinks, golds and silvers, but also in garish yellows, reds, oranges, greens and cobalts and tied into elaborate floral confections known as mazzolini, almost dazzling in their brilliance. Architecturally, the city is a delight, from the main square with the panorama of the mountains behind and the thirteenth-century aqueduct running across one end, the handsome Baroque church of SS. Annunziata and adjoining mediaeval palace, and a maze of streets round the centre, lined with mostly eighteenth-century buildings from the modest to the very fine. The town has a most orderly and civilized air to it, and is clearly cultured, even boasting an international piano competition; it might be tempting to move there, although the winters are notoriously severe.