Trabocchi Coast is the name given to the stretch of coastline reaching from Francavilla al Mare (PE) to San Salvo (CH), which looks out over the Adriatic Sea. Running in parallel is state road no. 16 and, in the past, a part of the railway line. It owes its name to the trabocchi, wooden structures dotted along the coast, sort of “spiders of the sea” anchored to solid ground which used to allow fishermen to fish without having to take boats out to sea. Today the stretch of coastline mainly characterised by rocky coves, towards the south, is a tourist destination where the trabocchi provide a picturesque backdrop, with some now serving as restaurants.
“…Leaning out from the rocks, like a lurking monster with its one hundred limbs, the trabocco had a formidable look... The long and persistent fight against the fury and the snare of the sea seemed to be written on the great carcass by way of those knots, those nails, those devices. The machine seemed to have a life of its own, to have an air and the effigy of a living body. The wood exposed for years and years to the sun, to the rain, to the gusts, showed all its fibers, exposed all its harshness and all its knots, revealed all the resistant characteristics of its structure. It flaked, wore out, became white like a shinbone or shiny like silver or grayish like flint, it acquired a special character and meaning, a distinct imprint like that of a person on whom old age and suffering had done their cruel work... "
The evocative metaphors of Gabriele D'Annunzio taken from his Triumph of Death give us the most effective description of the wooden structures of the trabocchi.
Film Commission d'Abruzzo
Centro Regionale Beni Culturali - Sulmona
Phone: + 39 0864 576303
Email: crbc@regione.abruzzo.it
Edited by Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, Scuola Nazionale di Cinema — Abruzzo.
