| Castles, resort and hotels list
in Acquasanta Terme |
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| Acquasanta Terme is the main town of a
territory which is 138 kmē wide and included mostly in the National Park of the Gran
Sasso and Laga Mountains. The uninterrupted following of wooded ridges and valleys, all of
them confluent in the profound and spectacular valley of the Tronto river, makes the
territory of a particularly complex morphology, while the more than fifty villages,
disseminated everywhere and even at considerable heights, are a consequence of the
intensely populated surrounding mountains. Today, its 3,500 inhabitants (they were 9,000
in the 1950s) are collected mostly in the small villages along the ancient Roman Salaria
road. The prehistoric sheep-track has always found in Acquasanta a natural place for
pausing, thanks to its numerous caverns and the comfortable warmth of the thermal waters;
they were already known for their beneficial effects in the ancient Rome, as the name
“Vicus ad Acqua” in the military Roman itineraries of the “Carta
Peutingeriana” indicates. After the fall of the Roman Empire, Acquasanta follows the
historical vicissitudes of the near Ascoli Piceno, through Longobard settlements, the
influence of the Benedictine monks from Farfa, the dominance of the Bishops-Counts, until
being included in the Marca of Ancona by the Pontifical State, after the “Egidiane
Constitutions” of 1357. After the occupation by Napoleon, the Unification of Italy
anticipates of five years the unification of the present municipal territory, which was,
until 1865, divided into five different administrations, four of which were an heritage of
the ancient chief offices, autonomous since eight hundred years. From these few lines
about Acquasanta is, however, clear that the town should not be considered as a limited
entity, as many could think, but as a complex system where, together with the main town
and the prodigious thermal waters, are to be included the many villages with their ancient
houses and churches, the century old woods, the river Tronto and its numerous torrents,
the ancient Salaria road with its daring bridges. It is a system of difficult
interpretation which this writing will try to simplify, giving useful information and
mentioning the most interesting places |
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