The “Loggia Amblingh” is the most beautiful panoramic walk in Vasto, between Piazza Marconi and the perimeter wall of the gardens of Palazzo d’Avalos. The route was created at the beginning of the twentieth century when the collapse of Gabriele Rossetti’s birthplace, built on the old walls, had made the city government aware of the need to strengthen this part of the city, which had already been affected by major landslides in the past.
Above the embankment built to reinforce the houses located on the old route of the city walls, a promenade was thus created which was named after Guglielmo Amblingh, an Austrian soldier born in Graz and who arrived in Vasto following Cesare Michelangelo d’Avalos, when he returned after exile in 1713.
Guglielmo Amblingh, who died in 1760 and was buried in Santa Maria Maggiore, had become commander of the d’Avalos troops in 1723 and had accumulated considerable fortunes, invested by buying a large part of the houses located close to the walls between the marquis palace and the Santa Maria gate. Mary. The place where he lived was the first of these houses, right on the edge of the palace gardens. Just like the marquis, Guglielmo Amblingh also wanted to create a view towards the sea, the “loggia”.
Today nothing of this original lodge exists anymore. In its place there is the small square which can be accessed from via San Gaetanello next to the Avalos gardens and which today also leads to via di Portone Panzotto, but the name has remained to designate the entire pedestrian stretch that allows you to walk along the entire medieval quarter of Santa Maria.
In the center of the walk, we find the door of Santa Maria, today more commonly called Porta Catena due to the presence of the aedicule of the Madonna della Catena erected in the first half of the nineteenth century in front of it.
To the left of the door, in the second house, you can see an enormous arch, which was certainly present already in 1793, but it is not known when it was built into the walls, nor what its function was. In front of the door, as mentioned previously, the aedicule of the Madonna della Catena and the stepped staircase that runs along the arches of the embankment and leads to Fonte Nuova and from there, to the beaches of Vasto Marina.
Due to the landslide of 1816, the profile of the ridge that goes up from Porta Catena to the end of the walls, and therefore to today’s Piazza Marconi, is steeper than it was historically. A trace of it can be seen in the part of the walk that goes from the large arch to the Large Roman Cisterns which is made up of a staircase built on a partly protruding structure.
