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History and Territory
Casalbordino is situated on the hills behind the Adriatic sea to around 8 Km from it, framed by a splendid and luxuriant nature and on the background the majestic Maiella . Its hills are rich of cultivations of fine grapes and centenary olive groves , carrying column of the agricultural economy and pride of the inhabitants of this calm place of the coast Abruzzese.
Ruins of the abbey of Saint Stephen in Rivo Maris
To the borders of a situated highland along the coast of Casalbordino rise-up the rests of the basilica paleocristianas and of the monastery medioevale of Saint Stephen in Rivo Maris. The area, inclusive in Roman epoch in the territory of the town hall Histonium (Vast), was crossed by a coast ramification of the Street Flaminia that from Ancona it conducted in Brindisi whose exact layout, brought by the ancient itineraries, it is not known yet. Recently nevertheless excavations effected to the feet of the hill have brought to the light, near the Roman road, the rests of a presumed statio: a sort of ancient service station where take a break, to feed or to change the horses. In epoch medioevale the street line was traced by the Tratturo the Aquila-Foggia.
Abbey of Saint Stephen in Rivo Maris
On the summit of the hill, where are visible the ruins of the Benedictine monastery, he was effected in the years '70 an accidental excavation that conducted to the recovery of the rests of a basilica with attached cemetery, without doubt one of the most interesting monuments of the abruzzese and molisana Christian antiquity. she had to be in origin a basilica to three aisles divided by colonnades, long more than m. 20 and wide around m. 12, with rich pavement musiva policroma. The basilica in this first plant can be dated among halves the V and the You century. This chronology is suggested by the stylistic analysis of the flooring musiva and from the iconografia of the building, that proposes again in smaller staircase and simplified a typical example of adriatic architecture paleocristiana influenced from the great oriental basilicas. The prestige of the basilica, situated in rural environment, the presence of the cemetery to it annexed and the distance from the cathedral of Histonium, they induce to hypothesize that really Saint Stephen constituted the true center of cult for the believers of the zone,that they lived in built-up small areas. In 1257, within the most general process of affirmation of the monachesimo cistercense in Abruzzo, the monastery of Saint Stephen was annexed to the cistercense abbey of Saint Maria of Arabona . In this epoch the building paleocristiano kept on developing a role of recall as cemetery, whose existence is attested by collective burials recovered inside the right aisle and that they have returned objects of personal outfit and of belt among buckles some datable the XII and the XIV century Different walls of the monastery are preserved with ornament of pebbles river, to define the rests of an imposing installation cultuale strengthened articulated in various environments. Close to the monastery it kept on surviving the paleocristiano building, transformed, from restaurations plurisecolari, in one "reduced church" built inside the central aisle of the first basilica and endowed with an own apse of small dimensions.