Teenagers in skin-tight jeans and t-shirts are coupled on stone benches, sitting face to face with their legs entwined, gazing into each other’s eyes, and leaning in for gentle kisses. I’m on the outer rim of the flat, rectangular park in Sulmona, a small town in Abruzzo, Italy, trying not to stare. Back where I live in Los Angeles, I never see these live, sigh-inspiring reminders of my long ago high school days.
According to Tiziana, my guide, I’m where I belong. “The inside of the park is only always for the young lovers,” she tells me. The amore show, softly shaded by tall pine and linden trees, seems to be no big deal to the natives in my path: kids wearing Hello Kitty jackets holding their mamma’s hands, weathered seniors in dark wool suits greeting each other with buona seras. It’s quintessential Italy, where romance seamlessly blends with daily life and as I continue to explore Sulmona, it comes at me from all directions.
The Latin poet Ovid, author of The Art of Love, a courtship and sex manual, was born here in 43 BCE. Strolling along Corso Ovidio, the cobblestone main drag named in his honor, I’m surrounded by displays of candies I automatically associate with love,—confetti or sugar coated almonds—the town’s most famous export. At every Italian-American wedding I went to as a kid, I remember white confetti wrapped up in small netted bags that were given as favors. “It symbolizes a wish for the couple to have a fruitful marriage,” Tiziana says. The Corso ends at an impressive 13th century aqueduct that opens to Piazza Garibaldi, where knight-in-shining-armor fantasies are played out every summer with re-enactments of Renaissance jousts.
It wasn’t only in Sulmona where romantic sentiments were stirred up when I visited Abruzzo. This under-touristed region that lies east of Rome, on the calf of the boot, possesses a quiet magic—conjured up through a mix of small towns rich with tradition, Medieval and Renaissance architecture, vibrant food and wine, and welcoming natives. A dramatic backdrop of unspoiled natural beauty completes the picture, featuring a mesmerizing Adriatic horizon, grassy fields of grazing sheep, and shimmering green hills framed by the snow-capped Appenine Mountains.
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