Overview
You have a nobleman to thank for having 'invented', as they say, the village of Villalfonsina: a corner of peace and well-being among the hills of Chieti, cloaked in vineyards and olive groves, and the sea at Vasto, some 20 kilometres away. Un tuffo nella natura, prima nel verde della campagna poi nel blu dell’Adriatico, che vi può riconciliare con il mondo intero.
His name was Alfonso and this is the only certain information. Some texts claim that he was Alfonso Caracciolo, prince of San Buono and baron of Casalbordino, who founded the village in the 16th century. Others, that he was that Alfonso d'Avalos, Marquis of Vasto and great imperial leader of Charles V's army (the king who said 'On my kingdom the sun never sets'), who owned a fiefdom there at that time. Other studies say that the village was founded by a colony of Slavs who had fled from the opposite shore of the Adriatic due to frequent Turkish incursions, the so-called 'Schiavoni'.
Whatever happened, the traces of that period left in the architecture of the place are vague. What we see is a small village made up of houses often connected to each other by porticoes, courtyards and stairs, with some epigraphs dating back to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, an ashlar portal from 1849 and elegant buildings, remodeled in the nineteenth century in neoclassical style.
Perhaps most of all, the Church of St. Mary of the Snows renewed the ancient presence of the Slavs with its bulbous domed bell tower. The rest of its 17th-century structure was remodelled in the following century with the single-nave interior containing beautiful paintings and stucco work. Nearby, you will find a big kiosk fountain built between the 19th and 20th centuries with an octagonal plan.
In the Ripari district, admire the Sanctuary of the Madonna del Buonconsiglio, built with exposed bricks and with a sloping roof.
But above all, the food and wine are what bind you to the small village: among the first courses, the maccheroni alla chitarra, spaghetti made of fresh pasta with a square cross-section, a typical format of Abruzzo cuisine, served with a mixed ragout of beef, pork or lamb; and, as a second course, the arrosticini, another symbolic dish of the region, with morsels of mutton, lamb and mutton. The meal is rounded off with fine wines from the Terre Chietine, the pride of the area and the whole of Abruzzo, and extra virgin olive oil, a precious elixir of long life.