Tortoreto

Toponymy

The name of the town is due to the large presence of turtle doves (tortore) during the Middle Ages.

Pope Gregory I, for example, noticed in a letter the large amount of these species of birds which used to live in this area. Later on, the town created on the top of the hills after the barbarian invasions started to be called Turturitus or Turturetum, and, eventually, the current denomination of Tortoreto came into common use.

Administration

Since 1995, the mayor of Tortoreto has been directly elected, along with a list of councillors which would constitute the mayor's majority within the city council.

Before then and in post-war era, only the council was elected, and the Christian Democracy used to be the most successful and popular party locally as well as regionwide and nationwide.

2014 elections

The latest local elections in Tortoreto have been held in 2014. Although losing almost 20% of votes in comparison with the predecessor and the same supporting municipal list five years earlier, the centre-right mayoral candidate and her civic list were still able to win a 46.67% share of votes and to retain a majority of council seats. The centre-left municipal list won 35.61% of votes and the Five Star Movement 17.71%.

Education

In Tortoreto there are two state primary schools and two state middle schools, which are overall attended by about 680 students, as well as a number of state and private child care institutions and nursery schools.

There are also two private vocational secondary schools.

Tourism and fishing

During summer season the main economic activity is tourism.

Its geographic position, climate, facilities and environmental projects, have all been planned or used to further tourism. Tortoreto has been awarded the European Blue Flag in 1992 and, then, from 1998 until 2015.

Fishing was a common activity in Tortoreto before tourism and it continues on a smaller scale to the present. Another common activity was farming with the area producing substantial amounts of olive oil and wheat.

Cuisine

The area around Tortoreto, Teramo Province, is famous for arrosticini ("rustelle" or "arrustelle" in the local dialects) and chitarra e pallottini.

Arrosticini are made from small pieces of skewered castrated sheep's meat (mutton). It is cooked on a rectangular charcoal grill, called "canala" because its shape is similar to a canal or channel. Arrosticini, a similar kebob, may be made from any mixture of meats.

Traditional chitarra is a hand cut pasta made by rolling the pasta flat and thin and then using a device that resembles a guitar, hence the name, to cut the pasta. The noodles are much like flat spaghetti. The "Chitarra con le pallottine" is chitarra served with a tomato sauce with very small meatballs.

Chitarra e pallottini has been recently object of a dispute between Piedmont and Abruzzo. While Piedmont claims the paternity of the dish as an early 20th-century one, third party studies determined that people from Abruzzo were using small meatballs in the early 18th century. However, a recent study conducted by Gian Maria Pautasso, Italian expert in gastronomic archaeology, has identified evidence of the Northern paternity of this dish in a very ancient culinary book produced in 1344 by a monk from the Abbazia of San Colombano di Bobbio located in the South of Piedmont. Pautasso explains in a recent book that, "At that time, there were no tomatoes in Europe but, as they were doing in the "brodera" (typical dish made of rice and pork's blood) they used to mix the meatballs with pork's blood."

International relations

Tortoreto is twinned with: