Easy bike tour. Suitable for all levels of fitness. Mostly paved surfaces. Suitable for all skill levels. Final section in town along road used by cars.
A cycle path guides cyclists towards the center of San Salvo. The route takes them to the roundabout of the Alpini monument and then continues along Strada Istonia until reaching Via Roma. Here, they will find themselves in front of the town hall in Piazza Papa Giovanni XXIII, from where they can visit the Archaeological Park of the Quadrilatero, the Church of San Giuseppe, and the Porta della Terra in Piazza San Vitale.
The Archaeological Park of the Quadrilatero is located in the heart of San Salvo’s historic center. It coincides with the original nucleus of the city and is a system of cultural assets offered for public enjoyment.
Created following archaeological investigations carried out since 1997, it consists of sites of historical and archaeological interest.
Within the park, you can find the Civic Museum “Porta della Terra” which houses and displays some of the artifacts found in the San Salvo area, particularly from the Quadrilatero area. The exhibited materials have been selected to follow an underground path that goes back in time, from the Middle Ages to the Archaic Age, through environments marked by medieval and Roman walls.
Excavations have made it possible to reconstruct the different building phases and the organization of the monastic settlement in the Middle Ages, when the Quadrilatero took on its definitive form, still recognizable in the urban fabric of San Salvo’s historic center, precisely at the time of the construction of the Cistercian abbey of Saints Vito and Salvo del Trigno, which at the end of the 13th century reformed a Benedictine community present on the site since at least 1173.
Archaeological investigations have also brought to light the remains of a Roman settlement that arose in the 1st century AD and reached its maximum development in the 3rd century AD.
To this period belong the Hypogeum Roman Aqueduct, which still supplies the Old Fountain, and a large and articulated building with walls in opus incertum, mosaic floors, polychrome marble coverings, and frescoed plaster.
These are precious testimonies of the stable occupation of the fluvial terrace on which San Salvo stands since at least the 6th century BC, when the site, which dominates a long stretch of the lower valley of the Trigno river, was chosen by the Frentani for its strategic position and the fertility of its soils.
The Museum also houses a photographic copy of the most important documentary source for the reconstruction of medieval Abruzzo history: the Chronicon Casauriense, written around 1140 in the scriptorium of the Benedictine abbey of San Clemente a Casauria.
In the Archaeological Island of Chiostro 4, the remains of a Roman domus and the concrete foundations of the monumental well located in the center of the abbey’s cloister are visible.
The Church of San Giuseppe was the church of the Benedictine monastery of San Salvo in the Middle Ages (12th century) and then of the Cistercian abbey of Saints Vito and Salvo (late 13th century), until the 15th century when the monks abandoned the settlement.
Since then, numerous renovations have altered its original appearance, but the northern external wall still shows the medieval walls on which two single-light windows in limestone, walled up in modern times, open out.
The Archaeological Island of the Roman Mosaic owes its name to the precious polychrome mosaic pavement discovered in 2002.
The northern part of the mosaic carpet consists of a frame of vine shoots emerging from four elegant jars, and in the center of which must have been the figurative emblem, unfortunately lost. The Municipal Park is the meeting place par excellence for the local community. Here social relationships are woven, children play and tourists feel welcomed, thanks to the equipped areas, the cycle path, the service area and the suggestive recently created sculptures.
The “Forze Emergenti” fountain, better known as the Glass Fountain, is an architectural sculpture composed of four basins surmounted by a complex geometric articulation of sculptural elements in glass. The Fountain, which can be crossed by the visitor, is a real open-air museum and illustrates the phases of the glass working process, whose production is at the basis of the socio-economic transformations of the local community from the sixties to the present day.
The dynamic composition of “L’Aquilone” completes the message of the Fountain, underlining its aspects related to the future of progress towards which the city feels projected.
The “A. Moro” Cultural Center houses the city’s library, the auditorium, the theater and cinema hall, and a recording studio, designed by the architect Giovanni Di Domenico, which has become part of the national architectural heritage of the 20th century.
“Attività cofinanziate dal PSR 2014/2022 Abruzzo – mis. 19; PSL Costa dei Trabocchi; fondo FEASR; sottomisura 19.2; tipologia di intervento 19.2.1; intervento 19.2.1.3; sotto intervento/progetto 19.2.1.3.3”
