Every design for Teramo

Teramo sits on a raised plateau where two rivers meet, the Tordino and the Vezzola, with the slopes of the Gran Sasso behind it and the land falling away towards the Adriatic through vineyards and olive groves. The Romans named it Interamnia for exactly that reason: the town between two streams.

The Teatro romano di Teramo still stands among the houses of the centro storico, a reminder that this was a Roman town long before it became a provincial capital. Older still are the Praetutii, the Italic people whose name, worn down over the centuries into Aprutium, travelled out of the city and ended up naming the whole region of Abruzzo. In the Middle Ages Aprutium meant both the town and the country around it. The Domus e mosaico del Leone shows how comfortably Roman families lived here, while the Basilica Cattedrale di Santa Maria Assunta e San Berardo and the Casa del Melatino carry the story on into the medieval centuries.

For a long time the city stayed inside its plateau between the waters, until bridges over the Tordino and the Vezzola let it spread outwards. Stand on one of them today and you can still see the shape the Romans saw: an old town held in the fork of two rivers.