L'Aquila Discovery Guide
Why Visit L'Aquila the Smart Way
L'Aquila is a Renaissance mountain city at 714 metres under the Gran Sasso, the highest massif in the Apennines. It has a basilica with a chequerboard facade of pink and white stone, a fountain with ninety-nine spouts, and a papal indulgence granted in 1294 that has been celebrated every August since.
The friction is unavoidable and you should know it before arriving: an earthquake in 2009 killed 309 people and emptied the historic centre. Reconstruction is still going on. There are cranes, scaffolding and shored walls in the middle of the city.
Come anyway, and come knowing that. What has been rebuilt has been rebuilt beautifully, the students are back, and the mountains above are among the best in Italy. This is one of the most interesting cities in Abruzzo precisely because of what it is living through.
How to Experience L'Aquila
Collemaggio
The facade first, from a distance, then the interior — which is deliberately bare, and is the more moving for it.
Count the spouts
At the Fontana delle 99 Cannelle. It is the oldest surviving thing in the city and it survived 2009.
Walk the centre with your eyes open
Past finished restorations and past buildings still braced with steel. It is not a comfortable walk and it is the honest one.
Go up to Campo Imperatore
By road or cable car: a treeless plateau at 1,800 metres with horses on it, and the Corno Grande above.
Eat arrosticini
Ordered by the fistful, cooked over a fornacella, eaten with bread and a rough red. It is the regional dish and it is not refined.
Be here for the Perdonanza
If the dates work. A seven-hundred-year-old indulgence in a city rebuilding itself is a particular thing to witness.
Where to Find Authentic Cultural and Historical Character
L'Aquila is a city in the middle of the longest project in its history, and it is impossible to visit without noticing.
The 2009 earthquake is not background. It shaped who lives where, which businesses survived, how the university functions and what people argue about. Reconstruction has been slow, expensive and litigated, and residents have strong and divided views on all of it. They will talk about it readily; treating the subject as delicate is more awkward than raising it.
Against that there is a striking absence of self-pity. The Perdonanza was held in the ruins. Bars reopened in temporary structures. The mountain culture — shepherding, transhumance, a hard climate — produces an unsentimental sort of resilience that the city clearly draws on.
It is also a proper student city, with the argument, cheapness and nightlife that implies, and an outdoor culture built around some of the best mountains in Italy.
Visitors remain fewer than before 2009, and are correspondingly welcome.
Travel Profile
- Best Known For Santa Maria di Collemaggio and the Perdonanza, Europe's oldest jubilee • The Fountain of 99 Spouts • Campo Imperatore and the Gran Sasso • A capital city rebuilding itself in public since 2009
- Travel Styles Cultural tourism • History • Off the beaten path • Hiking • Mountain travel • Winter sports • Architecture • Archaeology
- Travel Environments Historic cities • Mountains • National parks • Countryside
- Getting Around No airport and only a slow branch railway, so almost everyone arrives on the frequent A24 coach from Rome, about ninety minutes, or from Pescara in a little under two; the old town sits at 720m and is compact enough to cross on foot, though it is a slope and parts of it are still scaffolded, and Campo Imperatore, Santo Stefano di Sessanio and the Gran Sasso villages effectively need a car outside the summer bus season
Responsible Travel Tips
L'Aquila needs visitors and has specific requests of them.
Do not treat the damage as a sight. Photographing braced facades is unavoidable and fine; photographing into people's propped homes, or framing the city primarily as a ruin, is not. This is a working city, not a memorial.
Spend in the centre. Businesses that reopened inside the walls took a risk on the reconstruction, and they are the ones that make the centre viable.
Stay out of fenced sites entirely. They are structurally unsound and they are active construction zones.
On the Gran Sasso, this is serious mountain terrain with fast weather, and the Calderone remnant is a monitored scientific site rather than a curiosity.
Buy Navelli saffron from producers if you buy it at all; it is picked by hand in enormous quantities of flowers for very little spice, and cheap saffron is not from here.
When to Visit L'Aquila
28 and 29 August is the Perdonanza, the city's own occasion and the best time to be here if you want to understand it.
June and September are the best all-round months: warm days, cool nights, and the Gran Sasso at its most walkable.
July and August are warm and pleasant by central Italian standards, and the mountain is the reason people come.
October brings the beech woods turning on the Gran Sasso and clear air across the basin.
Winter is cold and snowy, with skiing at Campo Imperatore and a city that is quiet but fully working. The university term matters more than the season for how alive the centre feels.
Late October is the saffron harvest on the Navelli plain, which is done entirely by hand and is worth arranging to see.
Travel Cost Levels in L'Aquila
What a visitor actually pays in L'Aquila
L'Aquila is inexpensive, partly because it is a student city and partly because tourism has not returned to pre-2009 levels. Accommodation in the centre is still limited by the number of buildings back in use, so book rather than assume. Ski season at Campo Imperatore is the one time prices move.