Reef and “trabocchi” of the Canale

A few steps from luxuriant gardens alternated with groves of reeds, torrents and deep valleys sloping to the sea, the Vasto reef of Trave, Casarza and San Nicola up to Canale and Vignola, is a magical play of bays, rocks and pebbles, a sequence of breathtaking views punctuated by the “trabocchi,” the archaic fishing systems also described by D’Annunzio, extending over the Adriatic Sea’s thousand shades of blue.

The Abruzzo coast from Ortona to San Salvo is called the “Coast of the trabocchi" exactly because the typical pile-dwellings used for net fishing are a stable part of the landscape.

In the locality of Canale, the beautiful beach set against the most intense shades of green is delimited by two trabocchi.

On observing them, its seems as if they are about to collapse into the sea at any moment, opening out on the rocks with their platforms or nets fastened to long arms and outriggers that allow you, without using any boats, to reach the deeper waters teeming with fish.

These are very old and fragile structures that, however, have resisted the weather conditions through the decades, like silent watch-towers of the sea.
Still today the trabocchi exhude a very peculiar charm, one belonging to the past. Their eccentric architecture enlightens our imagination and stimulates curiosity. Centuries of events and vicissitudes of fishermen narrate about their pontoons where entire families spent more time than in their actual homes.

The trabocco today, besides being a symbol and synthesis of the traditions and life of a whole population, has become also a resource for the development of cultural tourism.