The name, the town, and the monks: how Torino di Sangro has a long history

The legend of the bull that saved the town tells a truth through the lens of myth: an animal, an escape, a refuge. But alongside the myth lies a documented history—in archives, monastic chronicles, and municipal records—that fills in the gaps and sometimes contradicts it. It is worth telling, because it explains why Torino di Sangro is called that, when it ceased to be simply “Torino,” and who, for centuries, held this strip of coastline in their hands.

The name that changed twice

Until the mid-19th century, the town was simply called Torino. A short, ancient name it shared with the far more famous Torino in Piedmont. After the unification of Italy, the expansion of the Kingdom’s postal service turned this shared name into a minor logistical nightmare: letters, money orders, and certificates regularly ended up on the wrong desk—usually 800 kilometers away.

The solution came on July 20, 1862, when the town council decided to add a reference to the nearby river to the name. From that moment on, the town was recorded as “Torino del Sangro”—the form with “del,” which in the following decades settled into common usage as “di Sangro.” It was a local resolution, not a prefectural decree: the decision was made by the town’s administrators, not by a higher authority.

“Considering the need to distinguish the municipality from the more famous city in Piedmont, in order to avoid frequent mix-ups in the mail…”
—summary of the City Council minutes, July 20, 1862

But where does “Torino” come from?

Regarding the origin of the name—the true, ancient one, predating the addition of the river—scholars agree on two competing hypotheses.

The linguistic interpretation. The root is pre-Roman: taur-, traceable to tauros, which in Indo-European meant “mountain, elevation, high ground.” It is the same root that gives its name to the Piedmontese city of Turin (from the Taurini, a Celtic-Ligurian-speaking people settled in the Susa Valley), to Tauro in Anatolia, and to the Tavoliere in Apulia. In this interpretation, “Torino” simply means “the rise, the hill”—the town is “the rise” above the coastal plain, and that is all.

The heraldic interpretation. The municipal coat of arms features a black bull on a blue field. The legend of the bull that led the escape links the name to the animal. It is a popular etymology: a later addition, constructed to give meaning to a coat of arms and a collective memory of flight and refuge. It does not replace the first interpretation—it complements it, as the histories of places often do.

Both versions are true, each in its own way. One explains where the sound of the name comes from; the other, what that name means to those who live there.

Civita di Sangro (or perhaps “Sàra”)

The town we know today is not the first settlement in this area. Before Torino, along the hills and the coast, there were at least four settlements recorded in the chronicles:

• Civita di Sangro (or Civita del Sangro)—the main settlement, of Samnite-Frentan origin, situated lower down toward the sea. It is the “mother town” of the founding legend.
• Rocca d'Osento — on the ridge between the Osento River and the smaller streams.
• Rocca di Sangro — at the mouth of the river.
• Uomoli and Muccoli — the localities where, according to studies on the medieval settlement of the area, the town of Torino later formed.

The dates regarding Civita di Sangro are clear. Between the 11th and 12th centuries, it was donated to the monastery of San Giovanni in Venere (Fossacesia). In 1194, it suffered its first destruction at the hands of the Crusaders. In 1268, floods and landslides ravaged it once more. In 1411, the monastery ceded it to Turin. By 1413, it was already abandoned. By 1753, no visible trace remained of the lower town.

Oral Tradition: “Sàra” and the Two Exoduses

In the town homes—when the elders tell their grandchildren about the origins, by the fireplace or on summer evenings—another name circulates for that lost settlement: Sàra (or “Sara”), a town that rose on the banks of the Osento River. It is not found in textbooks, nor is it recorded in published chronicles. But it is a name that endures, and it must be recorded as the voice of those who pass it down—because oral stories, when they survive the centuries, usually tell something true even when the archives do not confirm them.

The same oral tradition adds a detail absent from the “official” version of the legend of the bull: the flight from the Saracens was not a single movement but a double exodus. Part of the population ran toward the hill by the sea, following the bull to the place where the animal stopped: thus Turin was born. The other part fled inland, toward the hills that today belong to Paglieta. Two branches of the same family, divided by the same night.

This detail of the double exodus, which no written source documents in this form, becomes more plausible in light of what we know: there were indeed more than one contemporary settlement in the area, and the “flight to the hills” of the 9th–10th centuries affected a wide area, not a single town. Local stories, at times, hold a historical truth that is more subtle than it seems.

The lines on parchment: the monks of Santo Stefano in Rivo Maris

The first time the name “Torino” appears in writing—not in a legend, but in a preserved document—is in 991, in a chronicle of the Abbey of Santo Stefano in Rivo Maris written by Brother Rolando. It is a valuable detail: it means that by the end of the 10th century, the town was already established enough to be recorded in the records of the most important monastery in the area.

That abbey—whose ruins can still be visited on the coast between Casalbordino and Torino di Sangro—is the thread that runs through nearly a thousand years of local history. It is worth following:

• 5th–6th centuries — the original church of Santo Stefano is built along a branch of the Via Flaminia that ran from the Adriatic to Brindisi. We are within the territory of the Roman municipality of Histonium (present-day Vasto).
• Late 10th century — the church has now become a Benedictine community, under the protection of Trasmondo II, Count of Chieti, and dependent on the Abbey of Farfa in Sabina, the most powerful Benedictine monastery in central Italy.
• 991 — first mention of “Torino” in the chronicle of Friar Rolando.
• 1060 — the Norman Ugo Malmozzetto, general of Robert Guiscard, sacked the abbey, marking the start of the Norman conquest of the Chieti area.
• 1081 — Robert of Loritello and his brother Drogone donate the early Christian cemetery of St. Comizio di Pallano to the monastery.
• 1140 — Torino formally becomes a monastic dependency of Santo Stefano.
• 1257 — The abbey, now in decline, is annexed to the Cistercians of Santa Maria d’Arabona (Manoppello).
• 16th century — Turkish raids on the Adriatic coast devastate Santo Stefano. The abbey will never be rebuilt to its former splendor.
• From the late 1500s to 1806 — with monastic authority fallen, the fiefdom passes to the d’Avalos family, Marquises of Vasto, and subsequently to the Carafa family, until the abolition of feudalism ordered by Joseph Bonaparte.

For nearly a thousand years, the life of Torino di Sangro was linked—fiscally, legally, and spiritually—first to the Benedictines of Farfa, then to the Cistercians of Arabona, and later to noble families from Spain and Naples. It was not until 1806 that the town became an administratively autonomous municipality, and from there began its more recent history, which concluded—as far as the name is concerned—with the resolution of July 20, 1862.

What remains today

Concrete traces of all this remain, which can still be seen:

• The ruins of the Abbey of Santo Stefano in Rivo Maris—on the coast of Casalbordino, accessible via the Via Verde dei Trabocchi. Romanesque masonry, mosaic floors unearthed during archaeological excavations in the 1990s, a central nave still discernible in the stones.
• The church of Santo Stefano in Rivo Maris alla Marina — not the ancient abbey but the new parish church, built in 1990 in the seaside district of Torino di Sangro, continuing the historic name.
• The municipal coat of arms—the black bull on a blue field—on the facade of City Hall at Piazza Donato Iezzi 15.
• The historic center—the medieval urban layout is still visible between Via dei Colli and Via Roma, with views that “overlook” the sea just as they did when they were designed.
• The site of Civita di Sangro—nothing remains standing, but the location of the lost settlement is the subject of archaeological study, with periodic survey campaigns.

The story of a name, in the end, is the story of those who bore it. Torino di Sangro traces its origins to a pre-Roman plateau, to a flight rooted in Samnite memory, to a chronicle by Benedictine monks from 991, to a heraldic bull, to a city council resolution from 1862, and—if oral tradition is correct—to a town named Sàra, of which only the sound remains in the voices of the elderly. All this, in a nutshell.