L’AQUILA — A journey through Abruzzo works by subtraction. The further you travel from Rome on the A24, the less noise, the less crowd, the less of everything that clutters ordinary Italian travel. Then, somewhere around the Gran Sasso, the additions begin.

L’Aquila spent 17 years in scaffolding after the 2009 earthquake. In 2026 it opens as Italy’s Capital of Culture, with the Teatro Comunale among the buildings finally returned to the city after nearly two decades of silence. In Scanno, women pull on the same style of dress their great-grandmothers wore. On the Navelli plateau, the October dawn still begins with fingers moving through crocus fields, picking saffron stigma by stigma. Visitors who witness any of this are watching daily life, not a demonstration.