Termoli

People lived around Termoli in prehistoric times, as necropolises outside town show, and wealthy Romans had villas along this coast. The ancient name is thought to have been Interamna Frentanorum, "the land between two rivers" of the Frentani, after the Biferno and the Sinarca. When barbarian raids and crisis struck the late empire, around the early 5th century, people from nearby took refuge on the promontory, high, open to the sea and joined to the land by a single approach. The Lombards made it the seat of a county and gave it walls, a keep and eight crenellated towers.

The town flourished under the Normans. Count Robert I of Loritello built the castle in the 11th century, and it was largely rebuilt under Frederick II in 1240 after an attack by the Venetian fleet; the cathedral rose in the 12th and 13th centuries. An earthquake in 1456 wrecked the upper part of its façade, and in 1566 the Turks sacked the town. A long decline followed until around 1770, when the Kings of Naples let local nobles build outside the walls along the coast and inland.

In October 1943 Termoli was the scene of one of the biggest tank battles of the Italian campaign. British commandos landed from the sea on the night of 2–3 October and cleared the town, then held it against counter-attacks by the 16th Panzer Division until reinforcements, with Canadian tanks, drove the Germans back on 6 October. After the war, people from the depopulating hill towns moved to the coast, and a Fiat factory opened in 1972.

Life in Termoli has always been bound to the sea, and so are its festivals. On 3 August the statue of San Basso, the patron saint, is carried from the cathedral to the port and loaded onto a fishing boat chosen by lot; the fleet follows it out to sea, where the bishop throws a wreath of flowers into the water in memory of those lost at sea, and the statue spends the night in the fish market. The next night brings fireworks over the harbour and bonfires along the beach of Rio Vivo. On the night of 15 August the Incendio del Castello recalls the attacks the old town suffered in centuries past.

The trabucchi on the rocks are the town's emblem as much as the castle. These wooden fishing machines, which during the Second World War alone fed much of the then smaller population, are now kept for their heritage value. Contemporary art has a home in MACTE, opened in the converted neighbourhood market in 2019, and since 2013 the Cinema Sant'Antonio has hosted the Kimera International Film Festival.

Termoli also has an Arbëreshë (Italo-Albanian) population, like neighbouring towns such as Campomarino. Local pride shows in a long-running rivalry, especially in sport, with the provincial capital, Campobasso: some termolesi like to say their town is "senza provincia". The semi-professional football club, Termoli Calcio, was founded in 1920.

About 31,700 people live in Termoli, the second most populous town in Molise after Campobasso, and the population grew quickly after the Second World War as families left the inland hill towns. Most live in the residential districts spreading inland and along the coast north towards Sant'Antonio and south towards Rio Vivo, while the old town on the promontory is small, restored and partly given over to visitors.

The economy rests on three things. The port, the only one in Molise, keeps a trawler fleet working and runs ferries to the Tremiti Islands all year. The industrial zone is anchored by the Stellantis car plant, built by Fiat in 1972, the most important plant there. And tourism, once modest, has made the town a favourite resort for Italian families, many of them from Campania and Puglia, though few foreigners come.

The rhythm changes with the seasons. In summer the beaches fill by day, the seafront restaurants are crowded and Corso Nazionale is packed in the evening, especially at weekends, with young and old walking or meeting friends. Outside summer the town is quieter and more workaday, with olive groves and vineyards in the countryside just beyond the suburbs. The public park, the Girolamo La Penna municipal park, was laid out in the 1960s as the town's main green space.

Termoli's cooking is the food of a fishing port, made with olive oil from the surrounding countryside; the town belongs to Italy's national associations of olive-oil towns and sea-fish towns. Its signature dish is u' bredette alla termolese, the local brodetto, one of the fish stews that are the signature dishes of almost every Italian town along the Adriatic. In Termoli it was the evening meal of fishermen coming home from the trawlers, made with many kinds of fish — cuttlefish, red mullet, mussels and others — according to the season and the catch.

Seafood pasta is the other mainstay, and menus around the port and in the old town offer dishes such as tagliatelle with cuttlefish ink, clams and cherry tomatoes. Inland Molise contributes cavatelli, small pasta shells of semolina dough, for which Molise has its own local names such as cavatielle, and caciocavallo, a cheese made in several southern regions including Molise.

Evenings start with an aperitivo, often a drink with olives, taralli — ring-shaped wheat crackers common across southern Italy — crisps and small sandwiches, and end with gelato on the Corso. The wine of the region to look for is Tintilia, a red grape grown in Molise whose wine became a DOC in 2011, and the countryside around town produces its own olive oil and wine.