Things to See in Chieti | 2 Monuments & Landmarks

All the monuments in Chieti

The landmarks and masterpieces worth planning a day around.

Villa Frigerj, neoclassical home of Abruzzo's archaeological museum

Museo Archeologico Nazionale d'AbruzzoNational Archaeological Museum of AbruzzoWarrior of Capestrano statue, disk-shaped helmet, 1934 plow discovery, Villa Frigerj settingA farmer's plow struck Italy's strangest surviving ancient statue in 1934: a Picene funerary monument to a king named Nevio Pompuledio, carved around the sixth century BC in limestone, shown with arms crossed over his armor and crowned by an enormous disk-shaped hat found nowhere else in ancient Italian sculpture. Known as the Warrior of Capestrano for the necropolis where it was found, the statue anchors this museum's collection as the emblem of pre-Roman Abruzzo, housed since 1959 in Villa Frigerj, a neoclassical building from around 1830. Galleries beyond the Warrior span prehistory through the late Roman Empire, including the Pansa Collection and a numismatic collection of some fifteen thousand coins, and the museum now welcomes a modest but steady stream of visitors each year to a region far less touristed than Rome or Naples to its west and south.Plan the visit

Abbazia di San Liberatore a MaiellaHidden GemSan Liberatore a MaiellaRomanesque abbey, geometric mosaic floor, Majella National Park, Desiderius of MontecassinoSan Liberatore stands in the Alento valley at the foot of the Majella, inside the national park. Legend links its foundation to Charlemagne, and a first rebuild is credited to the Benedictine monk Theobald around 1007. The church you see was rebuilt from 1080 under Desiderius of Montecassino, in Lombard-Romanesque style: a white façade, a square bell tower, and a basilica plan with a nave and two aisles divided by seven round arches. Inside, look for the geometric mosaic floor of about 1200 in the nave, the ambo with twelfth-century reliefs, and frescoes in the apse, among them a sixteenth-century portrait of Theobald. Restoration in 1967 to 1971 saved it after centuries of decay.

The Chieti guide

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Monuments a day trip away, elsewhere in Abruzzo.

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