Fishing on stilts

Trabocchi

Wooden structures on stilts precariously perched above water always gave me a vision of a tropical area in the Far East, something you would see in a travel brochure or documentary show. These however are on the coast of southern Abruzzo.

Trabocchi are fishing platforms that have been used since the fifteenth century in an area they call Costa dei Trabocchi. They are suspended over deep water and accessed by walkways that look like they would require a prayer before crossing. There are long poles, resembling antennae, that stretch out over the water which they attach netsto be lowered into the sea. They resemble a huge crab entering the Adriatic Sea.

We have never seen these listed in any English language guide for Abruzzo, and finding a good book in English for this area can be difficult. I saw these mentioned briefly in an Italian guide for the region and recently we received a notice from Slow Food Abruzzo (www.calenta.com) that they will be having a series of dinners hosted on some of the trabocchi. We recently made the hour and a half drive down the A14 to see these for ourselves and they are certainly a unique site to see.