Punta Penna, the magical place where reality and myth merge
The second tallest lighthouse in Italy, after the Genoa Lighthouse, is the Punta Penna Lighthouse, guarding the port about 8 kilometers from the center of Vasto. The current lighthouse, destroyed during World War II, is a replica of the original one completed in 1912.
The promontory of Punta Penna, about 15 meters above sea level, has always been a reference point for navigation and for the settlements that have succeeded here over time. The Roman remains found here testify to a settlement about which we unfortunately know very little. Some believe that this was the site of the city of Buca, present on maps of the time and later disappeared from records.
Others, however, tell of how the promontory once extended further into the sea, and about three kilometers from the current coast, the city of Aspra stood. It seems that there is indeed something at that distance on the seabed, but no excavation campaign has ever been conducted on this sort of Adriatic Atlantis.
What is certain is that already in the early Middle Ages, a village named Pennaluce was established on this promontory, founded on Roman pre-existing structures. It is known since 1006, and the small village had some commercial importance during the Angevin period, thanks to its natural harbor.
Unfortunately, Pennaluce was weakened by the consequences of some earthquakes and was definitively destroyed and depopulated in the early 15th century by an attack by the Venetians, so much so that in 1417, Queen Joanna II of Anjou granted the city of Vasto possession of the now uninhabited hamlet.
The site thus remained only a place of devotion, particularly cherished by Marquis Don Diego I d’Avalos who, at the end of the 17th century, decided to build a hunting lodge in the nearby valley of the Lebba stream, and in 1689, he had the church rebuilt in a Greek cross plan. The temple was then restored in the mid-19th century when it assumed its current neo-Romanesque forms.
In the 1980s, remains of Bronze Age settlements (1000 B.C.) and traces of a Roman temple were found beneath the apse area, attesting to the importance this site has always had for the local populations. Today, the Church of Madonna della Penna is located in a completely different context, as it stands at the entrance to a small port district from the 1950s. However, it still retains an unchanged charm given by its position overlooking the sea, with the imposing lighthouse behind it and the view that extends from the coast of Vasto to the Gargano.
