Trabocchi

Trabocchi, or travocche, in local dialect, are very unusual, ingenious machines for shoreline fishing, consisting of a stilt platform that extends out to sea and allows a large square net to be dropped while the fisherman stay high above the water.
Found in various points along the Adriatic coast, from Chioggia to Gargano, there are a large number on the Abruzzo shore, they are quite densely concentrated above all from Ortona to the Molise region.

They are spontaneous architectures so always make the most of environmental characteristics, but they also express a well-observed application of the flexible support methods of cable-stayed structures.
Indeed, the base platform is an elementary, primitive stilt house, while the winch for hauling the net and the poles to reinforce and support it come directly from the culture of cable-stayed superstructures for building sailing ships.
The trabocco is still a spellbinding element that characterizes the Chieti provincial shoreline and local history too.

The oldest document to mention a trabocco is the manuscript Vita Sanctissimi Petri Celestini. written in the latter half of the fifteenth century by a Celestinian father, who tells that when Pietro da Morrone stayed at the abbey of San Giovanni in Venere in Fossacesia (1240–3), he often went out to the belvedere hillside to admire the sea below “dotted with trabocchi”.

During these operations, settlers were employed: some were immigrants from Dalmatia and others had already settled in the sparsely inhabited area a few decades before, many of them exiles from antisemitic persecution that occurred in northern Europe. They came mainly from France (the Verì family) and Germany (the Annecchini family), and were skilled artisans, especially the Verì, who were expert carpenters in the construction of walkways suitable for river crossings, but who also grew and processed hemp and flax, moreover they are said to have introduced the cultivation of oranges (typical of the area and known as purtihalle, including the fragrant cetrangolo).

The techniques gradually became more sophisticated , from the use of long spears used while standing on the platforms, to gillnets that were placed between the rocks and collected using makeshift rafts constructed with reeds (lu cannizzero ), until they gradually improved. the structures by making them evolve with the use of outrigger nets hoisted by a winch (lu voddavie ) placed in the centre of the deck.

The trabocco at the Rubbanhille rock was probably the first built by the Verì, in 1777, followed by others that were increasingly more advanced; the “Rubbanhille”, namely the “Reubenites” were the Jews from the tribe of Ruben.
With the arrival of the railway in 1862–3, new materials became available in the area and these radically changed the structure of the trabocco.

The introduction of wire was also decisive, which made it possible to create more resistant tie rods, making the structure more daring and the components narrower. The subsequent renovation of the railway after Second World War bomb damage made sections of iron tracks available and they were used to replace the wooden poles driven into the water.

Now, with a significant reduction in the amount of fish found along the coast because the industrial fishing methods in use, the trabocco has once again changed its intended use, adapting to the shifting needs of the times and is now used mainly for restaurant service.
The platform set on stilts was enlarged to accommodate dining tables, and the small initial tool and winch shed became a kitchen of an appropriate size.

On the trabocchi, unlike the paranze, it is still possible to go up and hear the wood of the gangways creak in their apparent fragility as they bend with the waves. And stop to talk to the surviving traboccanti, heirs of ancient dynasties, and listen to their stories, suspended in an ancient dimension.