THE "TRABOCCHI" OF THE ABRUZZI COAST - Fishing machines with a life of their own

‘I am off to San Vito’.

This is what Antonio, my very good friend for the last thirty years, used to tell me each summer. And he would talk about the seaside, the special joy of being home again, the amazing fish soups, and the endless seafood meals.

‘You should come one day,’ he would tell me. ‘It’s a special place’.

I knew that San Vito was in Abruzzo ( a region in Central Italy) but – sincerely – that was it. I did not even know that its full name was San Vito Chietino. It was not a physical location yet, but the town Antonio drove to each summer to visit his parents and spend some time at the beach, or eating and cooking fish, and enjoying endless summers. It was rather a place of comfort, and one of the many retreats far away from the hustle and bustle of Milan.

So, when in May this year, Antonio sent me a WhatsApp message with a picture of crystal-clear waters and what looked like a Polynesian stilt-house at the end of a narrow boardwalk suspended above the sea,

‘Is that really in San Vito?’ I typed, ‘Is the sea really THAT clear?’

‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘Come and see for yourself’.

Three days later, with my friend and travel companion Laura, I booked an Airbnb accommodation in San Vito Chietino, where we would spend ten days, in July.

Driving South from Milan for 620km was the price to pay to enter Antonio’s world, discover that what looked like a stilt house suspended above the sea was, in reality, a ‘trabocco’, and find out that San Vito Chietino – including the upper part of the town (where our accommodation was located), older and definitely charming – was much more than yet another Italian-style summer abode. It was the place from where we could explore the Trabocchi Coast, but also the inner areas and the towns closer to the mountains.

Abruzzi has interesting geography, and besides the beaches and the seaside resorts, it is home to three national parks, one regional park, and almost forty protected nature reserves. The region is one of the greenest areas in Europe.

But, let’s get back to what fascinated me most during my holiday. ‘Trabocco’ can only be translated into English with ‘fishing machine’. There are many stories surrounding the origins of these very particular structures that can be found in this area of Abruzzo and also in other places on the Adriatic coast, even if with different characteristics that – in my opinion – do not make them as charming. Some say that they date back to the Phoenician times, others that they have more recent origins, and that they were a clever invention to assure a safe shelter to the fishermen who did not have, in this way, to adventure out to rough seas.

The "trabocco" or "travocco" is made of pine wood, able to withstand the saltiness and the strong mistral winds that blow across the Adriatic. The shape is reminiscent of a proper stilt house at the end of a gangway jutting out into the sea, anchored to the rocks by large trunks, from which two or more long arms extend. These ‘arms’ are suspended a few metres from the water and support a huge net. Fishing is not a simple job. The depth of the sea in which the trabocco is positioned, and its facing – which should take advantage of the currents – are very important elements for the fishermen, who should be skilled enough in operating the net, lowered into the water using a complex system of winches and then promptly pulled up to retrieve the catch. At least four people are needed, sharing the tasks of spotting the fish and manoeuvring the net.

The trabocchi are such clever and distinctive inventions, that they abound in literature. The earliest and most ancient documents telling us about the 'trabocchi' in Abruzzo date back to the XIII century. Father Stefano Tiraboschi of the Celestinian Order wrote in his manuscript about the life of Pope Celestine V, that the Pope - while staying at the Monastery of San Giovanni in Venere (1240-1243) – enjoyed admiring the sea below, 'dotted with trabocchi'.

Famous are also the descriptions given by poet Gabriele D’Annunzio (more later).

Nowadays, though, the trabocchi are no longer used for fishing, or at least not primarily, as it was in the past. There are about thirty trabocchi along this part of the Abruzzi coast, that have become restaurants, attracting the curiosity of many tourists, who fancy dining over the sea in a romantic setting that normally can accommodate less than 50 people, including the staff.

Antonio's cousin, Gabriele Nardone, runs Trabocco Punta Fornace, a restaurant that is always fully booked. For that reason, we couldn’t dine there, but decided to pay him a visit and listen about his experience as a ‘restaurateur over the sea’.

‘Trabocco Punta Fornace’ is 60 years old, and it was renovated about 20 years ago. Gabriele has been working there for ten. He explains that even when the trabocco was just a fishing machine, it was considered in the same way as private beach clubs (stabilimenti balneari), where you can rent umbrellas and chairs. And things have not changed much. For this reason, it still needs to have a government licence to operate, because it is located on government property. A regional law, in 2010, allowed the trabocchi to be run as restaurants so that they could be preserved and not left, abandoned, at the mercy of waves, winds and rain.

Also, Gabriele’s restaurant has been ‘transformed’ from its original structure, in order to make space for a kitchen. The trabocchi were, formerly, more essential, as their only use was for the fishermen to catch fish and manoeuvre the winch. Nonetheless, from the end of October to the end of March, Gabriele’s trabocco is converted again into a fishing machine, all open and exposed to the winds and the fury of the sea, and its clear vinyl curtains, which normally shelter the restaurant guests, are removed.

Gabriele comes from a family of restaurant owners and worked in that field for some time. Once he changed job, he was selling equipment for the maintenance of trabocchi. One of his customers was the owner of Trabocco Punta Fornace. The man intended to rent the place, and this is how Gabriele picked up the challenge. Ten years down the road, he still enjoys his job very much and he finds it quite addictive.

According to Gabriele, the challenge is to consider the trabocco not as a ‘touristy’ food concept, but as a ‘niche’ place that can offer a unique culinary experience. It has to remain a cozy, exclusive restaurant, where the sound of the wind, the smell of the sea, and the swooshing of the waves are combined with premium quality ingredients from the nearby area and the catch of the day, bought directly from the fishermen according to what the sea can offer: absolute freshness is the key.

While talking to Gabriele, we could see ‘Trabocco Turchino’ (in the cover), so masterfully described by Gabriele D’Annunzio, the famous poet and playwright, representative of the Decadent literary movement. D’Annunzio spent days writing in the silence of his hermitage, located exactly in San Vito Chietino, where the pebbly beaches and natural inlets with crystal-clear waters caught our attention. He described this trabocco in a famous passage of ‘Il Trionfo della Morte’ (‘The Triumph of Death’):

“The great fishing machine—that collection of trunks freed from their bark, planks and cables, whose strange whiteness resembled the colossal skeleton of some antediluvian amphibian…seemed to have a life of its own, to have the air and figure of an animated body. The wood, exposed for years to sun, rain, and tempest, showed all its fibres…was denuded, was consumed, was white like a tibia, or shining like silver, or grayish like silex, acquired a special character and significance, an imprint just as distinct as that of a person on whom old age and suffering have achieved their cruel work.” (translation by Arthur Hornblow).

Trabocco Turchino is not a restaurant. It stands in the mare turchino (turquoise sea) as a symbol of the area, a witness of past and present events, a listener to the fishermen’s secrets.

A few days before, we had visited Punta Aderci, a wild, untamed corner of the coast, where at the end of a narrow path we reached a fantastic vantage point, from where we observed the long, curly waves chase each other. Down the hill, there was a cove: there were pebbles smoothened by the water, and logs, branches, twigs - vestiges of trees washed ashore, now resting there, whitened, hollow like tubular bells. Someone had stacked them, making pyramids with crisscrossed scaffolds of wood to create shelters offering some shade to the wanderers, lulled to sleep by the whistling wind.

Just there, at the tip of a wooden finger extended over the green waters, yet another ‘trabocco’ - empty, alone, abandoned. It was beautiful, majestic, and it still looked so alive, as it stretched its arm into the bounties of the sea.

Cover: Trabocco Turchino
image: sanvitochietino.info