Pescara – the Riviera

Where to begin, if not at the sea.

For what would Pescara be without the sea, without its lungomare and luxurious lidos, its pier and pescatori? 

What would it be without its marina and mega yachts? 

A fitting name

The city’s name (but for one letter, the same as the verb meaning to fish) evokes the sea. It was around the year 1000 that Aternum, as the Romans called it, became Piscaria, like the river on whose banks it stood. In 1927 the town was joined with Castellammare Adriatico on the river’s northern shore. Efforts to revert to the Roman name were thwarted by Pescara’s most famous son, Gabriele D’Annunzio, who appealed directly to Mussolini.

The Ponte del Mare

Pescara is a modern city, much of it built after the Second World War, when it was partly destroyed by heavy allied bombing and by the withdrawing German army.

Some of it is so modern it gleams. Take the new pedestrian and cycle bridge, the Ponte del Mare, that extends the lungomare and the Adriatic Cycle Path over the river. Steel girders glint as it sweeps skywards and swoops down again to the south side, towards the panoramic wheel and the porto turistico, where crowds flock in the summer to concerts and summer fairs, pausing on the way to wish themselves aboard the billionaires’ yachts docked at the quay.

If lidos were cars

And then there are the lidos, or ‘bagni’ as they are called here. Pescara beach joins that of Montesilvano to the north in a seamless 10km stretch of golden sand.  But if lidos were cars, Pescara’s would be Ferrari compared to the Fiat Pandas of its northern neighbour  Some have their own swimming pool, most have restaurants or at least a fancy cocktail bar. On the beach, instead of umbrellas, there might be imitation palms, offering enough shade for 12 people.

As we stroll northwards along the broad and pleasant lungomare, or the riviera, we stop to watch a game of beach volley. The young players are, of course, lithe and athletic, the picture of health and fitness. There is little clothing but lots of glistening bare skin, dusted here and there by grains of golden sand. As I watch, the thought comes, not without a pang, that in my own cold-climate adolescence I might have missed out.

The riviera widens into the Largo Mediterraneo, a bustling square flanked on one side by palazzi and on the other the beach. It is a popular place to meet and mingle, as well as being the symbolic meeting place of the sea and the city.

Fontana la Nave

It is only natural that one of the city’s symbols is a ship. On the beach side of the Largo is a modern sculpture in Carrara marble, the Fontana La Nave, by Pescara-born Pietro Cascella. The design is of a galley propelled by oars.Though its position has an unobstructed view of the sea, the prow faces inwards, as if to directs its seafaring energy and power towards the city itself.

I have seen this fountain in another setting. It was initially exposed in Piazza Santa Croce in landlocked Florence, the connection being that the then mayor of the Tuscan city was a descendant of Gabriele D’Annunzio. The sculptor Cascella also lived and died in Tuscany. But the ship fits better here on the Pescara riviera.

The Largo is often the scene of concerts and events, which spill onto the beach. And from here begins the main shopping street, Il Corso.

Another Pescara

For it’s not summer all the time and there is indeed life in Pescara away from the sea. Inland are commercial offices, residential areas, schools and a university, a hospital and cemeteries, a bus and train station (a colossal glass and concrete edifice once described by my mother-in-law, after spending 15 frustrating minutes trying to locate the exit, as ‘beautiful but not practical’), an airport and an industrial zone. And then there are the shops.

That is where we’re going next.