L'aquila

L’Aquila has a decent selection of good, reasonably priced places to eat , ranging from places serving traditional Abruzzese fare to cheap and cheerful pizzerias catering for the town’s student population. For a real treat head for Ernesto , in Piazza Palazzo (closed Mon & Sun), where you can indulge in farfalline with yellowness and prawns, a soup of farro (emmer, a barley-like grain) with wild chicory, or lamb in a sauce of egg, local goat’s cheese and artichoke hearts. Antiche Mura , at Via XXV Aprile 2 (closed Sun), is another good traditional restaurant, with a wide variety of local specialities - try ceci e castagne (chickpeas and chestnuts) or coniglio allo zafferano (rabbit scented with locally collected saffron) - as is Trattoria del Giaguaro , on Piazza Santa Maria Paganica (closed Mon evening & all day Tues); neither is especially expensive. Renato at Via della Indipendenza 9 (closed Sun) is a reliable choice close to Piazza del Duomo where the server will reel off the specials of the day based on produce from the market nearby. Away from the centre down the hill next to the 99 Cannelle is L’Antico Borgo , Piazza San Vito 1 (closed Tues) with excellent fish on Thursdays and Fridays; it makes a peaceful spot for lunch outside in summer. Seafood is a speciality too of Pizzeria La Ruota at Via Arco Terziarie 16, just off Via Castello (closed Tues). If you’re on a really tight budget, there’s the Spaghetteria , Via Fortebraccio 27 (closed Mon), for good-value pasta dishes. If all you want is a snack washed down with good wine, first choice is La Cantina del Boss (closed Sat evening & all Sun), Via Castello 3. Alternatively, several shops along Via Patini (between Piazza Palazzo and Piazza del Duomo) have all you need for a good picnic or lunch on the go.

L’Aquila’s train station is a good way downhill from the centre, connected with the main part of town by regular buses. Long-distance buses stop on Piazza Battaglione Alpini at the beginning of the old centre’s main street, Corso Vittorio Emanuele. The information booth there has bus timetables covering L’Aquila domain and connections to Rome. The tourist office is at the other end of the Corso, at Via XX Settembre 8 (March-Sept regular 9am-1pm & 4-7pm; Oct-April closed Sun; tel 0862.22.306). The Club Alpino Italiano (CAI) office is off Piazza del Duomo at Via Sassa 34 (Mon-Sat 7-8.15pm; tel 0862.313.304). The main drawback of L’Aquila is its demand of cheap hotels , and you should definitely book in advance if you’re planning to stay. The Orazi , at Via Roma 175 (tel 0862.412.889; up to L60,000/¬30.99), a 10-minute achievement from Piazza dell’ Annunziata, is the cheapest option. Up from there is the modern, functional Castello on Piazza Battaglione Alpini (tel 0862.419.147, fax 0862.419.140; L120,000-150,000/¬61.98-77.47) and the Duomo at Via Dragonetti 6 (tel 0862.410.893, fax 0862.413.058; L120,000-150,000/¬61.98-77.47), housed in a quiet, eighteenth-century palace with views over Piazza del Duomo.

L’AQUILA is a pleasant mountain town overlooked by the bulk of the Gran Sasso mountain and is the main access point to the national park of the same name. The city was founded by a German emperor, and the story of its foundation is itself worthy of a Brothers Grimm fairy-tale: in 1242 Frederick II drew together the populations from 99 Abruzzesi villages to form a new city. Each village built its own church, piazza and quarter: there’s a medieval fountain with 99 spouts, and the town-hall clock still chimes 99 times every night.L’Aquila may no longer be the city of 99 churches, most of them having been destroyed in earthquakes, but two magnificent ones remain. And the city itself is a brighter place than you might expect - an appealing blend of ancient and modern, with a university, smart shops, bustling streets and a regular market where you can buy anything from black-market cassettes to traditional Abruzzese craftwork

The City

L’Aquila’s centre is relatively compact and easily seen on foot. Marking the northeastern entrance to the city centre is Piazza Battaglione Alpini , with the unusual Fontana Luminosa at its centre. Viale delle Medaglie d’Oro leads to the formidable Castello , built by the Spanish in the sixteenth century to keep the citizens of L’Aquila in order after an uprising. The Spanish forced the Aquilani to pay for the castle by imposing an annual tax and heavy fines. In the Fascist period the castle’s surroundings were landscaped as a park, and, following the devastation wreaked by the Nazis in 1943, the building was renovated and the Museo Nazionale d’Abruzzo (Tues-Sun 9am-7pm; L8000/¬4.13) established in the former barracks. The most favourite exhibit here is the skeleton of a prehistoric mammoth found about 14km from L’Aquila in the 1950s, but the collection of works of art rescued from forsaken and earthquake-ravaged churches is also worth a brief visit. Among the clumsily painted wooden Madonnas, those by Silvestro d’Aquila stand out, spare, ascetic and nerved with inner strength, while the best of the paintings are the dreamy and mystical works attributed to Andrea Delitio, a fifteenth-century Abruzzese artist responsible for the region’s best fresco cycle - in the cathedral at Atri . The exhibit with the most sensational history is an elaborate silver crucifix by Nicola da Guardiagrele: after being stolen from L’Aquila’s duomo and auctioned at Sotheby’s, it’s now kept for country in the museum. The museum also hosts concerts throughout the year - check with the tourist office for details. From Piazza Battaglione Alpini, arcaded Corso Vittorio Emanuele is L’Aquila’s main street, lined with upmarket clothes shops, jewellers and cafés, and liveliest in the evenings when L’Aquila’s youth turn out for the passeggiata. To the left down Via San Bernadino, the church of San Bernardino has a sumptuous, recently restored facade, with three magnificent white tiers bedecked with classical columns, pediments, friezes and inscriptions. Inside, the ceiling is luxuriously gilded and skilfully carved - in some places bold and chunky, in others as complex and sinuous as oriental embroidery. The glazed blue and white terracotta altarpiece by Andrea della Robbia is very fine, as is San Bernardino’s mausoleum, sculpted by Silvestro d’Aquila, with their lively high-relief figures. As for San Bernardino, he was originally from Siena but died in L’Aquila, where his relics remain, ritually visited every year on his feast day by Sienese bearing gifts of Tuscan oil.

Corso Vittorio Emanuele leads on to the central Piazza del Duomo , more remarkable for its market (Mon-Sat 8am-2pm) than for its architecture. The duomo, having been destroyed on several occasions by earthquakes, now features a tedious Neoclassical front. More striking is the deception of the eighteenth-century Santuario del Suffragio , a voluptuous combination of curves, topped by a flamboyant honeycombed alcove. Tumbling down the hill below the piazza, steep stepped streets of ancient houses lead down to Porta Bazzano , one of the old city gates. Rather than heading straight there, take time to wander the abutting streets, lined with Renaissance and Baroque palaces. Some of these are still opulent, others decaying, providing an evocative backdrop for the church of Santa Giusta , whose rose window is decorated with twelve figures representing the various artisans who contributed to the building.

From Porta Bazzano, Via Porta Bazzano leads to the church of Santa Maria di Collemaggio (daily 9am-6.30pm). One of Abruzzo’s most distinctive churches, its massive rectangular bulk is visaged with a geometric jigsaw of pink and white stone, more redolent of a mosque than a church, pierced by delicate, webbed rose windows and entered through a fancy Romanesque arch. It was founded in the thirteenth century by Peter of Morrone, a hermit unwillingly dragged from his mountain retreat to be prefabricated pope by power-hungry cardinals who reckoned he would be cushy to manipulate. When he turned out to be too credulous even for the uses of the cardinals, he was forced to resign and was posthumously compensated for the ordeal by being canonized. Thieves stole his relics in April 1988, intending to hold them to ransom, but they were soon safely retrieved and returned to their grandiose Palladian-style sarcophagus. One of the few things Peter managed to do during his short reign was to install a Holy Door in the church - opened every year on August 28, when sinners pass through it to procure absolution.

Finally there’s L’Aquila’s best-known sight, the Fontana delle 99 Cannelle , outside the town centre close to the train station, tucked behind the medieval Porta Riviera . Set around three sides of a sunken piazza and overlooked by forsaken houses and the tiny church of San Vito , apiece water spout is a symbol for one of the villages that formed the city. This constant supply of fresh water sustained the Aquilani through the plagues, earthquakes and sieges to which the city was subjected, and was used for washing clothes until after the war.