Overview
You will find it perched about 10 kilometres from Chieti and Francavilla al Mare, surrounded by other heights and wide valleys covered with vineyards. A seraphic vision, giving you in one bite sea, countryside and mountain, the Maiella, which you can reach in 30 kilometres.
"Just" because of these characteristics, a vacation in Ripa Teatina promises you, as they say, sea and mountains, leaving you pleasantly impressed by the traces of its history, its agricultural traditions, its flavors.
For being ancient, it is ancient. After all, such a flourishing location could not have escaped the Italic people of the Marrucini, who "hung out" in the area with their settlements (traces of Neolithic finds have been discovered along the Alento River); later it was the time of the Romans (perhaps present with the Castrum Teate, defending the city of Chieti) then of the Lombards, Normans, Swabians and Angevins, eras of great conflicts and bloodbaths, still remembered by the cylindrically shaped defense towers you can admire at the beginning of the town, one of which, the largest, is the symbol of the municipality.
Visit the originally 14th-century parish church of St. Peter, rebuilt in 1699, which houses inside the venerated 15th-century painting of Our Lady of Sweat, attributed to Antonio Solario known as the Gypsy, and a gilded wooden sculpture of the Madonna from the 16th century. Admire the Franciscan monastery church of Santa Maria della Pietà, with its atrium and cloister frescoes, and that of St. Stephen the Martyr, built on a pagan temple around the year 1,000; in the center, cross the statue of the famous American boxer Rocky Marciano, son of Pierino, a native of the village who later moved to the States.
Think that the village was also the birthplace of another world boxing champion, Rocky Mattioli. A stroll in the surroundings allows you to see a fortified farm with a tower, ancient brick kilns in the Mattonari district, remains from Roman times in the San Nicola and Casale San Felice districts. But most of all, the landscape and the fertile countryside win, creators of excellent olive oil and wine productions, such as Trebbiano d'Abruzzo, Montepulciano d'Abruzzo, Merlot, Passerina and Pecorino.
Enter the five wineries and three oil mills in the area and you will realize with the appropriate tasting, the goodness, tradition and work, which lie behind the precious products, annually awarded nationally.
All that remains is for you to taste the porchetta, typical of the area, among the best in the region, as well as the "usual" arrosticini, which have now become an icon of Abruzzo.