L'Aquila e Il Castello

The closest city to the village of Paganica, where I am living, is L'Aquila ("The Eagle"), with ~130,000 inhabitants. According to the guidebook Lonely Planet Italy, it's a grey, cold city, and it doesn't seem very recommendable. However, I have just found out that it can be very lively and warm, at least on Saturday nights, when the young people completely fill the streets of the historic downtown and there are huge crowds walking the streets and congregating in front of bars and nightclubs. I had just come back from Rome at 11pm (I will talk about that trip on a future post), and went to meet Peter (my colleague/roommate) and his girlfriend in L'Aquila downtown. There was some people on the streets, but not many, and Peter told me that they had come the day before (Friday night) and the place was pretty dead. We were all surprised when around midnight the place became so full it was hard to walk the streets.

Another nice surprise was the Castle. Built in 1532 atop a hill, on the edge of the historic downtown, the castle is a solid and imposing stone structure. It is very large, blocky, and surrounded by a huge moat that helped enhance it's solid block look. It seemed to have a single entrance, a tall stone bridge over the moat. It's the first time a have seen a castle like that, a fortress with an actual moat and bridge.

See pictures in the Italia Photo Album, by clicking either here or in the picture above.