Religious Tourism
The landscape of the Sangro Aventino territory, dominated by solitary mountains overlooking the sea through silent valleys, makes this land a place suitable for meditation and prayer. In addition to the numerous churches in this part of Abruzzo, which are daily destination for tourists and believers, it is possible to visit the evocative hermitages and rocky places of worship made in antiquity on the Maiella. The Sangro Aventino is a territory invaded by a deeply religious soul, from the mountains to the sea, from the spirituality of the Celestinian Hermitage of Palena, to the Abbey of San Giovanni in Venere of Fossacesia, placed on the top of a hill from where you can admire the Trabocchi coast, up to the uniqueness of the Eucharistic Miracle of Lanciano, the first registered by the Church (occurred in the 8th century AD). The story goes that a monk of the order of St. Basil, while celebrating the Eucharist in the Church of Saints Legonziano and Domiziano, (previous to the current church of San Francesco where the miracle is guarded) doubted the real presence of the body and blood of Jesus in the host and wine. At the same time the host would become flesh and the wine transformed into five blood clots of different shapes and sizes, still visible and kept in the elegant silver monstrance of the Neapolitan school.