Montenegrin and Albanian mountains.
Each of these regional segments is a set of subsets.10 In Apulia, there are two large peninsulas: Salento (5,300 km2) which faces the Adriatic at Otranto, and Gargano (2,000 km2), which defines the Manfredonia Gulf; in the middle are the wide Tavoliere Plain and Terra di Bari area. Gargano juts out into the Adriatic and is a plateau 1,000 metres high. On its northern side lie two lakes: Lesina and Varano. Here the low-lying swampy coast has favoured the establishment of salt-panning plants. At Manfredonia, Barletta, Trani, Bisceglie, Molfetta, Giovinazzo, Bari, Mola di Bari and Monopoli the coast is rocky. This has been one of the most densely urbanized areas of the Adriatic since Roman and medieval times. Further south lie the ports of Brindisi and Otranto. Apparently homogeneous, Apulia has always had an articulated social and identity reality. Nevertheless, Bari – one of the most dynamic cities in southern Italy – dominates. It is the only true counterpart for the ancient capital of Naples. Bari tends to increasingly centralize and regionalize not only Apulia but also areas of Basilicata, and it is the Italian port for Montenegro and Albania.
In the region of the ancient Picenum, which corresponds partially to present-day Molise, Abruzzo and part of Marche, there is a uniformity in the landscape overlooking the Adriatic. The Apennine mountain chain, of which Gran Sasso in Abruzzo is the highest peak, is a more inland area, and it has been a zone traditionally used for pastoralism. There then comes a hill area (more common in Marche) crossed by 20-odd smaller rivers that flow into the Adriatic. This area is characterized by cities which, although they are not far from the sea, are certainly distant from the maritime world. From south to north lie Lanciano, Chieti, Teramo, Ascoli Piceno, Fermo, Macerata, Recanati, Jesi and Urbino. These are all cities that represent the ideal classical Italian landscape: fertile soil, picturesque scenery, in which crops – cereals, vines and olives – prevail. But they are also fragile at a hydrogeological level. Finally, the coast: a long strip of sand with shallow seabeds, also crossed by many rivers. It was a sparsely inhabited area, almost deserted, until the late nineteenth century.
The western Adriatic has always been difficult, when not impossible to navigate. Ports lie on river mouths which were hollowed out with canals and protective dykes. Other southern cities, from south to north, are Termoli, Ortona, Pescara and Giulianova. This coast is characterized by trabocchi, typical buildings on stilts used for net fishing. Then Marche: San Benedetto del Tronto, Porto San Giorgio and Civitanova Marche are today important for fishing but were in the past seaports for Ascoli Piceno, Fermo and Macerata; they were more ports of call than sea cities. Ancona, north of Bari, is the first port of any importance through the centuries. Between Ancona, Senigallia, Fano and Pesaro, Marche has one of the most important maritime contexts in the western Adriatic. In the fertile hilly hinterland lie the extraordinary city of Urbino, the Montefeltro region and the Republic of San Marino. Molise, which has a coast only 24 kilometres long, tends to gravitate towards Apulia. Abruzzo also did so in the past (through transhumance, for example), while today it is more closely connected to Rome and Lazio. The polycentrism of Marche ends with Tuscany and Florence, and the many towns of the Umbria and Romagna regions. Despite the relative uniformity of the landscape near the sea, a centuries-old demarcation has separated the coast between the State of the Church (Marche) and the Kingdom of Naples (Abruzzo) along the Tronto River.
Romagna is an Adriatic region characterized like few other regions by marine tourism, by the seaside holiday industry. As long ago as the time of Emperor Augustus, Ravenna was the most important Adriatic port, which later declined as, together with Comacchio, both silted up. Rimini was for years a small port. Nevertheless Ravenna, and Ferrara, although envious of its characteristics and its eccentric position regarding Romagna, just like Forlì and Cesena, both inevitably agricultural cities closely linked to the Po Plain, have always looked to the Adriatic rather than gravitated towards it. Once again, the sandy beaches and the shallow seabed, which was mainly impassable for navigation, isolated rather than united Romagna from the sea. The Po River completes this picture, with its wide delta mouth bordering and dividing the Romagna and Ferrara coasts and the Venetian lagoon basins. Romagna is of course Adriatic in nature but is nevertheless connected to the Via Emilia axis, which forms one large urban sprawl, a single industrial zone, from Piacenza to Rimini. The crowded beaches in the summer, when the sea acts merely as a background, are the continuation of and the final limit to the Po megalopolis.
North of the Po River, the lagoon area that historically extends for 400 kilometres has always been a world unto itself, despite being integrated into the Venetian Plain, present-day Veneto and Friuli. Since the early Middle Ages, the Venetiae, the various lagoon basins, islands, inhabited areas and the people have acted as go-betweens, as mediators between the strictly maritime world of the Adriatic and the hinterland that is essentially distant and different from the sea. This is one of the most extraordinary areas of Europe, together with the Netherlands, considering the human intervention that has managed the riverbeds and prevented the silting up of the lagoon. The unique city of Venice was founded and expanded in this precarious, difficult environment where sea and plain merge and where European and Mediterranean geographies meet. Between 1204 and 1400, Venice founded one of the most seafaring states in the history of the Mediterranean and later, from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries, turned to the domination of the mainland, expanding as far as the Alps and beyond Lake Garda. The upper Adriatic corresponds to the Gulf of Venice. Lying between the lagoons and Istria, Venice has for over a thousand years formed a unique maritime system of which the eastern Adriatic was an extension. The history of the Adriatic is not conceivable without Venice. Between the thirteenth and the end of the eighteenth centuries, the Adriatic was in fact the Gulf of Venice. Venice constantly laid claim to sovereignty of the waters in this sea. The end of the republic in 1797 led to a slow decline of the upper Adriatic regional world (the Venetian lagoons and Istria), which then became fragmented between local and national geographies. As regional capital of the Veneto region, Venice was always different from the Veneto hinterland. The Venezie, the Italian north-east, lacked a barycentre fully recognized by the peripheries and still today struggles to find its true regional identity. Venetian polycentrism (including Friuli) lacks a system logic that might have led to the actual regionalization of the pre-Alpine area. The mainstays in the Roman system were Patavium (Padua) and Aquileia. Venice and its dominion had not permitted a similar structure, and its political decline left a vacuum. Contemporary Venice also lacked a maritime and geopolitical spirit, and struggled to accept the role of frontier town it was assigned by Italy. The redefinition of the position created by the Serenissima Signoria was never completed. There was a tragic inability to relate to the sea and the Mediterranean after the fall of La Serenissima, the most serene republic, which had profound consequences for the very conception of the history of the Adriatic and its regions.
Trieste, the farthest strip of Italy, remained a place unto itself within the Adriatic area. A small medieval commune with a narrow karst territory, it was for more than five centuries (1382–1918) linked to the destiny of the Habsburgs as it was the port used for the distribution of the salt destined for the Austrian provinces. Trieste was declared a free port in 1719 and between 1880 and 1914 became one of the most important international emporiums in the Mediterranean. Trieste was a project strongly desired by Vienna for which the city was a maritime access, and it was still a cosmopolitan city in 1914. It was a symbol of Italian nationalism, too, and became part of Italy in 1918. However, Trieste never managed to become an actual capital city of the surrounding territory, either of Venezia Giulia in 1921–1945 or of Friuli-Venezia Giulia after 1970. It never really integrated with the neighbouring regions of Gorizia, Friuli, Carniola (Kranjska) and Istria, regardless of political events. Influenced by the Italy–Yugoslavia border, the city remained suspended even after the removal of the Italy–Slovenia border as a result of the Schengen European treaty, still seeking a concrete role rather than an identity between central Europe and the Mediterranean, between Italy and central Europe.
The Istrian peninsula, characteristic because of its triangular shape and its jagged coastline, is the first territorial unity when one continues along the eastern Adriatic coast. More than a geographic expression, it is a historic region that dates back to the Augustan Regio X Venetia et Histria, to the Byzantine Theme (sixth to eighth centuries),
