Overview
If you are looking for a quiet place, but one that at the same time offers you beauty, history and naturalness, Sant'Omero is for you.
You will find it in the province of Teramo, lying like a bishop on a hillock 200 metres above sea level and 16 km from the coast, dominating the Vibrata and Salinello valleys.
Breathe in the fine air of the place, a mixture of sea and hill currents that infuses you with vitality and well-being… all you need to spend a perfect holiday.
First a Norman fiefdom and then a fief of the Lords of Acquaviva, the village is tiny but elegant, with a classic medieval layout, as evidenced by traces of the walls that surrounded it in the 1400s.
Look out for the Church of the SS Annunziata, whose façade, dating back to 1754, is simple and influenced by the Baroque style; inside, among the sacred furnishings, admire a wooden Crucifix from the late 1500s, an 18th-century majolica depicting Saint Anthony Abbot, and a Baroque organ and wooden choir.
There is also a former church, that of SS Annunziata (known as Marchesale), built as a private chapel in the 17th century, on the site of a pre-existing church named “Madonna della Misericordia”, erected in 1348 during a terrible plague.
But the real beauty is to be found a few kilometres from the village. It is called “Santa Maria a Vico”, which is the only monument in the region dating from before the year 1000 that has been preserved almost intact. It is a piece of art, to be visited at your leisure, starting with its façade made with a very rare workmanship used in ancient Roman times, "ad opus spicatum", i.e. bricks placed in a cut shaped like a fishbone or a spike of wheat. A system which seems to have originated in those places where flat stones could be found, thus, in the valleys furrowed by rivers.
In the countryside, among the paths hidden in the fields, you can see a few examples of the so-called “Pinciare”, rural dwellings made of raw earth mixed with straw, chaff and pebbles, and the “caves of the Saracens”, cisterns from Roman times used until a few decades ago to collect water.
At the top of a hill, you can also admire the small church of Sant'Angelo Abbamano, perched with its simple Romanesque structures on the top of massive Roman buildings, maybe a public bath or a cistern, since a sulphurous water spring, now dried up, probably flowed nearby.
The best time to relax in Sant'Omero is all year round, but if you come in summer, don't miss the “Sagra del Baccalà” (Salt Cod Festival), one of the delicacies in which the community specialises, including stuffed olives, fried or roast salt cod with mushrooms, baked with black olives or stewed.
All accompanied with excellent DOC wines from the best wineries in the Val Vibrata.