Vasto Hotels

Vasto is a town on the Adriatic coast of the Province of Chieti in southern Abruzzo, Italy. The population is approximately 35,000.
According to tradition, the town was founded by Diomedes, the Greek hero . The earliest archaeological relics date to 1300 BC, evidence of the first settlements. Histonium was one of the chief towns of the Frentani, situated on the coast of the Adriatic, about 9 km south of the promontory called Punta della Penna. The city is noticed by all the geographers among the towns of the Frentani, and we learn from the Liber Coloniarum that it received a colony, apparently under Julius Caesar. It did not, however, obtain the rank of a colonia, but continued to bear the title of a municipium, as we learn from inscriptions. The same authorities prove that it must have been under the Roman Empire a flourishing and opulent municipal town; and this is further attested by existing remains, which include the vestiges of a theatre, baths, and other public edifices, besides numerous mosaics, statues, and columns of granite or marble. Hence there seems no doubt that it was at this period the chief city of the Frentani. (Romanelli, vol. iii. p. 32.) Among the numerous inscriptions which have been found there, one of the most curious records the fact of a youth named L. Valerius Pudens having at thirteen years of age borne away the prize of Latin poetry in the contests held at Rome in the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus. The name of Histonium is still found in the Itineraries of the fourth century and it probably never ceased to exist on its present site, though ravaged successively by the Goths, the Lombards, the Franks, and the Arabs. Some local writers have referred to Histonium the strange passage of Strabo in which he speaks of a place called Ortonium (as the name stands in the manuscripts) as the resort of pirates of a very wild and uncivilised character. The passage is equally inapplicable to Histonium and to Ortona, both of which names naturally suggest themselves; and Kramer is disposed to reject it altogether as spurious.