From Chieti, most people head south to the lovely historical town of LANCIANO , taking in the smaller town of GUARDIAGRELE on the way if they have a car. The latter town enjoyed a literal golden age in the fifteenth century, when it was home to Nicola da Guardiagrele, a gold- and silversmith whose ornate crucifixes and altar-fronts can be seen in churches and museums throughout Abruzzo. Guardiagrele itself, however, has only one piece by Nicola – a silver processional crucifix in the church of Santa Maria Maggiore . The church’s external fresco of St Christopher, by another great fifteenth-century Abruzzo artist, Andrea Delitio, was supposed to bring travellers good fortune. It had its own share of luck in 1943 when it escaped being destroyed by the German soldiers who smashed the church’s portico. Lanciano, some 18km easterly of Guardiagrele, holds one of Abruzzo’s most enticing and best-preserved historical quarters and is well worth the onward journey. As Italy’s main producer of needles and host of an important wool and cloth fair, Lanciano was a major commercial centre during the Middle Ages, and the main Piazza Plebiscito , in the words of a contemporary, was invariably crowded with “peasants in red and blue jackets, Jews in yellow sashes, Albanians, Greeks, Dalmatians and Tuscans: there was an assortment of languages, it was a muddle, a nightmare&” The square is not much quieter now, a chaotic junction where the cathedral balances on a reconstructed Roman bridge – a testament of even early prosperity, built in the time of Emperor Vespasian to give cushy access to the merchants of the Roman era.

Corso Roma leads out of the piazza and up to the church of San Francesco . Behind its austere rectangular deception are the relics of one of the more improbable miracles of the Catholic Church, the Miracolo Eucaristico . Contained in two reliquaries are five coagulated globules of blood and a fragment of muscular heart tissue, both 1200 years old. The story goes that during a communion service in the eighth century the bread became flesh and the wine blood in order to establish Christ’s presence to a doubting monk. The relics have been forensically analysed by the Vatican’s scientists, right down to their trace minerals, and the findings are presented in an exhibition, in which it is verified that the relics are indeed human blood and flesh, and that they both have the same blood group (AB) as that traced on the now discredited Turin shroud.

From the church, Via Fieramosca and Via Finamore climb up to the Torri Montanare , a bulwarked, multi-towered and crenellated stronghold as grim and impenetrable as when it was built in the eleventh century to protect the town’s newly built residential quarters. You can achievement along the walls, for great views of the Maiella mountain range, or descend to Via Santa Maria Maggiore to explore the appealingly crumbling houses of the medieval quarter, Civitanova , and Lanciano’s most interesting church, Santa Maria Maggiore , which is open in the afternoon only. Built in the twelfth century, it’s the best example of French Cistercian Gothic structure in the region; the portal, surrounded by a series of columns carved into twists, zigzags and tiny leaves and flowers as elaborate as piped icing, is slightly crumbled, while inside there’s a silver processional cross by Nicola da Guardiagrele, delicately decorated with biblical reliefs and hanging with silver incense baubles.

A few streets further on, a long flight of steps descends towards the centre. This marks the boundary of Ripa Sacca , the medieval Jewish ghetto – a series of the narrowest of stepped streets spanning out like ribs from a barely wider central spine. Here eighty Jewish families lived, obligated to notice a strict curfew, allowed to follow only certain professions, and forced to refer themselves by wearing a yellow sash at all times. A handful of the original houses remain on Via and Vico Santa Maria Maggiore, but even the later houses are in character. Below is the large and scruffy Piazza Garibaldi, and from there a flight of steps climbs up to Via degli Agorai, which was titled after its fifteenth-century needlemakers. The same street skirts another wanderable quarter, Lancianovecchia , not as old as its study suggests but still something of a centre for the town’s artisans.