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Home > Travel Italy > Italy Destinations > Vasto
Vasto
Italy, officially the Italian Republic or Repubblica Italiana, is a Southern European country comprising of the Po River valley, the Italian Peninsula and the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia. It is shaped like a boot and for this reason Italians commonly call it lo Stivale, the boot or, due to its prevalent peninsular geographical nature, la Penisola, the Peninsula.
Vasto is a town on the Adriatic coast of the Province of Chieti in southern Abruzzo, Italy. The population is approximately 35,000. According to tradition, the town was founded by Diomedes, the Greek hero . The earliest archaeological relics date to 1300 BC, Before Crist evidence of the first settlements. Histonium was one of the chief towns of the Frentani, situated on the coast of the Adriatic, about 9 kilometers south of the promontory called Punta Della Penna. The city is noticed by all the geographers among the towns of the Frentani and they learn from the Liber Coloniarum that it received a colony, apparently under Julius Caesar. It did not, however, obtain the rank of a colonia, but continued to bear the title of a municipium, as they learn from inscriptions.
The same authorities prove that it must have been under the Roman Empire a flourishing and opulent municipal town and this is further attested by existing remains, which include the vestiges of a theatre, baths and other public edifices, besides numerous mosaics, statues and columns of granite or marble. Hence there seems no doubt that it was at this period the chief city of the Frentani.
Among the numerous inscriptions which have been found there, one of the most curious records the fact of a youth named L. Valerius Pudens having at thirteen years of age borne away the prize of Latin poetry in the contests held at Rome in the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus. The name of Histonium is still found in the Itineraries of the fourth century, and it probably never ceased to exist on its present site, though ravaged successively by the Goths, the Lombards, the Franks, and the Arabs. Some local writers have referred to Histonium the strange passage of Strabo, in which he speaks of a place called Ortonium as the resort of pirates of a very wild and uncivilised character. Vasto is one of Italy’s most popular destinations, and is well known for the quantity of cultural related attractions and monuments that the city has embraced.
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