CENTRED IN what is probably the last wilderness in Italy, L’Aquila was the kind of place that visitors from abroad dream of finding.
Unknown outside of the country until today, this university town had none of the crowds associated with other Italian medieval attractions, and retained at its heart the vitality of pre-industrial Italy.
Despite being packed with bohemian student bars, there was a somnolent ease to the city. It tried to out-Christmas even German cities with its romantic seasonal market, speciality chocolates and mulled wines.
During the skiing season, mountains surrounding the city brought Romans an hour up the A24 to sport on slopes that once made Abruzzo nearly inaccessible to the Roman empire.
But links are stronger here with the south than the capital, and long before the university and the ski slopes, the economy was rooted in the earth and the sheep trade. Flocks wintered in southern Italy and then were brought to the high pastures in summer to fatten.
Forgotten mostly by tourists and Italy’s industrial giants, the town escaped most of the horrors of industrialisation and clung to its market-town roots.
The region of Abruzzo, too, with its bears and Apennine wolves, belongs to a bygone age, and was being promoted as a “green” destination.
“It was really just starting as a tourist destination, and even as an alternative to buy property for British visitors with the new Ryanair route to Pescara,” said Stefania Gatta of Italy’s tourist board.
“It’s difficult to say what impact the quake will have.”
With a third of its land a protected national park – now up for listing as a world heritage site – development has been slow in Abruzzo, which has just over 1.25 million inhabitants sparsely dotted over its 10,000sq km.
Santo Stefano di Sessanio, high in the Abruzzi Apennines, is only 16km from the epicentre of the earthquake, and yet survived nearly unscathed.
Hotelier Daniele Kihlgren said: “The restoration we did was very conservative, which is probably why we survived. Most of the buildings destroyed in the earthquake today were modern and concrete. It is perhaps a testament to the ‘real Italy’.” – (Guardian service)