** Because formatting photos to upload here can get time-consuming and complicated, the written portion of our posts will appear here, while the accompanying photos will be on our Trying on Italy Facebook page.
Abruzzo, that region that is so often confused with Arrezzo, a rather famous Tuscan town. We’d skirted through Abruzzo in previous travels, even visited a few coastal towns when we were staying in the Le Marche region. It’s become a topic for travel writers over the past 5 or 10 years – “Get your Italian home for one euro!”, “Cheapest property in Italy”, “Retire here!”. Yet until we started poking around looking at 7% tax towns, we’d never considered it as more than one of Italy’s varied and interesting regions. Being this close, it was mandatory to visit at least a handful of towns that might hold potential for buying or living.
It was also a good excuse to spend 24 hours in Ascoli Piceno, a town in Le Marche that stole our heart about 6 years ago. That’s another blog story to be written, though, and unfortunately it’s not a 7% zone.
We chose the town of Città Sant Angelo as our base camp. Located on a hilltop, it appeared to have a healthy enough number of inhabitants (about 15,000 but the majority are in the surrounding newer areas we discovered) and is situated somewhat ideally between the Adriatic Sea and the snow-capped Grand Sasso mountains. The other interesting thing that we discovered after our choice was that Città S. Angelo had been featured in a Forbes article (2018) as one of the top ten places in the world to retire. Another bragging point for the town is its addition to Italy’s list of “I Borghi piu belli” – Italy’s most beautiful villages.
We arrived midday, struggled a little to find parking, and made contact with the B&B owner’s friend who spoke only fast Italian. Out of kindness, he came to find us and lead us to the apartment situated in the Centro Storico, much to our grateful relief. Simple and comfortable, the apartment was set towards the end of a narrow side street. Looking out the upper floor window gave us a view of the ancient church wall, a church that is unfortunately closed and waiting for restoration. We unloaded and set out to walk as much of the area as we could.
To keep this from being too lengthy, I’ll try to get to the quick of what we thought on Città S. Angelo and the others as that is the “main idea” of this post.
I’lll be honest – my initial instinct was “probably not”. It’s a beautiful medieval town, offers a few good restaurants, has a couple of bars, a tiny alimentary, a few shops, and enough alluring side streets to keep curiosity up. When you can catch a view across the countryside, it’s spectacular. Within our two days, we had mostly mastered the lay of the town.
Folks seemed friendly, the shady park just outside the Centro had maybe 6 or 7 small children playing every afternoon with their mothers or nonnas exchanging chat, and the old town seemed to be generally occupied. It was not as “kept” as others, though — not as many plants gracing doorways and windows,, the two main churches were in need of repairs, and a feeling that a little more lifeblood would be a good thing. The area surrounding the town is beautiful, although fewer big trees and not as lush as Umbria, but rolling hills, vineyards and olives, and stunning mountains to the east. .
We had to pick and choose carefully our focus, so the first full day we visited two other towns of interest. Penne (pop. 11,000) was the first, a small town that visually is low in appeal. We’d read up a bit on it, maybe a good idea or not, so we had an idea of what to expect but wanted to see for ourselves. How not to sound judgmental — which is certainly not my intention — but the town needs a lot of TLC, a lot of revival. Which is, or course, what declaring a place a 7% zone is all about. It was not what we would choose, but there are others we’ve watched on Youtube that love Penne.
Next stop was Atessa. Nestled on a hilltop further inland from the sea than Città S. Angelo, Atessa (pop. 10,000) has the feel of a larger town, yet the population is less than Città Sant Angelo. My guess is that the majority of the citizens live within the confines of the town-proper, a blend of ancient and newer that co-exist rather smoothly. There were more amenities here, the views were incredible, and a rather bedraggled but convenient parking garage makes non-resident parking easy. My initial impression was doable; Marty’s not so much. The other consideration to always be considered is the proximity of a larger city offering medical care, an airport, etc. Pescara is that for this area, and lies about an hour from Atessa, while less than half an hour from Città Sant Angelo. Things to think about.
By the time morning had arrived on our departure day, we both had grown in feelings towards Città. It does have its charm, and probably as the season moves into summer, things get livelier. We bid her arrivederci and started back towards Spoleto taking a leisurely route along the Adriatic Coast.
The beaches here are composed of soft beige sand with shallow waters that are beautifully clear yet not the azure blue of west coast Italian beaches or Puglia further south. They’d work for me, though! The 7% towns we drove through with a stop or two to assuage curiosity (and hunger) included Silvi, a hopping beach town with many condos, beach front activities, restaurants, souvenir shops, etc. Next was the more sedate Pineto with fewer tourist accommodations, green vineyard laced hills rising just off the coast, and tree lined avenues. Tortoreto and Alba Adriatica were the last two, both barely indistinguishable from the other with varied offerings of tourist accommodations and everyday life. The beaches are beautiful in my opinion, and are very popular weekend escapes for many Italians. Note: we heard only one English speaking couple the entire time away, so start learning some Italian if you haven’t already! And one other note: we had the absolute best, inexpensive seafood lunch in Tortoreto served by very kind folks!
Overall impression: With the adjacent spread of sImall communities and townships that spill out from Città Sant Angelo and the proximity to a major city, the beach, and glorious mountains (and even skiing) — all within a hour — the town has a lot to offer. One could make a good life there.
And probably the same with Atessa, but the pull -after it was all said and done – was more aligned with Città. Final conclusion, though — we feel so drawn to Spoleto…over and over again. Mamma mia. However, Abruzzo is a region well worth exploring if finding a 7% tax town is your goal.
ADDENDUM: Not until I was looking through my pictures to post on our Facebook page did I realize that we had also spent part of an afternoon walking through Offida (Marche) on our return to Spoleto. We visited this town two or three times in the past and adored it. Known as the “lace town” and exceedingly rich in medieval charm, it was surprising that it was included in the 7% flat tax zone list. To our surprise, or perhaps because of our poor memories, we were a little taken aback as to just how large Offida actually is. Not a big town by any means, but it has an ample historic center that spreads out into pleasant layers of newer neighborhoods overlooking a spectacular gentle valley.
Pescara is a little over an hour away, so metro amenities are easy to get to. Offida is definitely high on my/our list, perhaps just below non-7% Spoleto!
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Marty’s thoughts …..
I used a 7% flat tax town database provided by www.caesartheday.com to select the towns we would look at in Abruzzo. We set the filter for towns with a population over 10,000 and under 20,000, knowing that we’d likely miss seeing some spectacular smaller towns, but we only had so much time. It takes more than a quick walk-through to really get a feel for a town. Ideally, a full day is needed for just the initial evaluation — walking the streets, eating a meal, enjoying an aperativo in the piazza, taking a passeggiata.
The database gave us about a dozen towns to explore. The vast majority in this list were coastal towns. Driving the coast of Abruzzo was a very enjoyable experience. For those drawn to a lifestyle with a nearby beach, one of these towns might be ideal. Paula and I both grew up in a coastal town in Texas, so living on the coast isn’t really a strong draw for use. Most of the remaining towns on the list were inland a ways. Two of them were considerably inland and quite a drive, so we just choose one of the two (Atessa) for an in-person visit since we didn’t have time to make it to the other (Celano) town. We also ruled out visiting Spoltore because even though it qualifies as less than 20,000 people now, the town has voted to merge with Pescara next year, so the 7% flat tax population limit would be exceeded. There as another town we didn’t visit because it was a few folks shy of 20,000, which would add to uncertainty if a move was made a year in the future.
My overall take is that I’d be happy here in most any qualifying town. Abruzzo has areas with the beauty of Tuscany, but much less populated. It had a touch of roughness that lended to a feeling of authenticity. We hardly ever heard English spoken … most towns thankfully didn’t seem to be geared primarily toward tourism.
My favorite two would be Città Sant’Angelo and Atessa. The former for the sheer beauty of the coast, mountains, and panoramic views from the vantage point of a hilltop. The latter, seemed to have a lot larger population base that was located in the city proper, so there were far more streets, shops, restaurants, etc.
As Paula said, even though we had very positive impressions, at the end of the day, we’d always start making comparisons to Spoleto. Then after favoring Spoleto, we’d start the debate again about whether or not is was more important to follow our hearts or be financially prudent. Chissà!