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Over the last century or so, Abruzzo has become better known for its emigrants than for itself. These number Dante Gabriele Rossetti, film star Alan Ladd, and, most recently, Madonna, whose ancestors left Abruzzo to seek their fortunes in Britain and America. They left behind them hilltop villages and medieval towns overlooked by mountain ranges in which wolves, bears and chamois roamed and legends of witches and werewolves persisted. Abruzzo has well and truly entered the twenty-first century; its coast is lined by a string of lucrative resorts, and its wolves, rounded up, enclosed and demystified, have become a major tourist attraction in its eponymous national park, the Parco Nazionale d'Abruzzo but there are still vast tracts of unspoilt countryside and villages where life is hard and strangers are a novelty. There's a strong, unshakeable sense of the provincial here, and although the region's costumes, crafts and festivals naturally appeal to tourists, there is little hype or sham. L'Aquila , at the foot of Gran Sasso, and Sulmona just to its south, are the most visited of Abruzzo's historic towns. Both are good bases: Sulmona is more convenient if you're coming by train from Rome, L'Aquila if you're approaching from Umbria. The hill-villages around L'Aquila are worth visiting if you're based here for any length of time: those below the Gran Sasso , the Apennines' highest peak, are deeply rural places, where time can seem to have stopped in the fifteenth century; Bominaco , to the east, has two impressive churches, one a perfect and pristine example of the Romanesque, the other covered with Byzantine-style frescoes. The rail route from the Marche runs down the coast through Abruzzo's numerous grid-plan resorts - few of them anything special, but adequate sun-and-sand stopovers. The best of them is Vasto , with a gently shelving sandy beach and bus connections inland to the lively upper old town. Among other hilltowns worth visiting is Atri , whose cathedral protects a stunning cycle of frescoes. South of Sulmona, Abruzzo feels more traditional. In Scanno the women wear costumes that - like the Scannese - originated in Asia Minor, and they make intricate lace on cylindrical cushions known as tomboli. Just down the road, Cocullo is a scruffy hill-village that on the first Thursday in May hosts one of Europe's most bizarre religious festivals, in which a statue of the local saint is draped with live snakes before being paraded through the streets.
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