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Abruzzo
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466
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69,368
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135
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714
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http://wwwcomunelaquilait
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Biagio Tempesta
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, 42°21 13°24E, at 710 m (2329 feet) above sea-level, is a city and
Comune of central
Italy , on the
Aterno river, with 69,131 inhabitants according to 2003 census figures. Founded in 1254, it is both the capital of the
Abruzzo Region and the seat of the
Province Of L'Aquila .
It lies on a hill in the wide valley of the Aterno, surrounded by mountains on all sides, the
Gran Sasso D'Italia being conspicuous on the north-east.
Although less than two hours' drive from
Rome , the city (laid out within medieval walls) has not yet been heavily affected by foreign tourism. L'Aquila is the site of many electronic industries, and is the home of a rugby team that has won five times the Italian national championship.
It is a favourite summer resort of the Italians, but is cold and windy in winter. In the highest part of the town is the massive
Fortress (''forte Spagnolo'') , erected by the Spanish viceroy Don Pedro de Toledo in 1534. The church of S. Bernardino di Siena (1472) has a fine Renaissance façade by Nicolò Filotesio (commonly called Cola dell' Amatrice), and contains the monumental tomb of the saint, decorated with beautiful sculptures, and executed by Silvestro Ariscola in 1480.
The church of
S. Maria Di Collemaggio , just outside the town, has a very fine Romanesque façade of simple design (1270-1280) in red and white marble, with three finely decorated portals and a rose-window above each. The two side doors are also fine. The interior contains the mausoleum of Pope
Celestine V . (d. 1296) erected in 1517. Many smaller churches in the town have similar façades (S. Giusta, S. Silvestro, etc.). The town also contains some fine palaces: the municipality has a museum, with a collection of Roman inscriptions and some illuminated service books. The Palazzi Dragonetti and Persichetti contain private collections of pictures. Outside the town is the ''Fontana delle novantanove cannelle'', a fountain with ninety-nine jets distributed along three walls, constructed in 1272.
Aquila has some trade in lace and saffron, and possesses other smaller industries. It was a university town in the middle ages, but its university was suppressed by the
Fascist Government . The university was instituted again after
World War 2 .
The city was established as Aquila in
1254 , with the permission of
King Conrad I of
Sicily (
Roman Emperor Conrad IV ) as a bulwark against the power of the papacy, becoming Aquila degli Abruzzi in
1861 , and L'Aquila in
1939 .
It was destroyed by Manfred in 1259, but soon rebuilt by Charles I. of Anjou. Its walls were completed in 1316; and it maintained itself as an almost independent republic until it was subdued in 1521 by the Spaniards, who had become masters of the kingdom of Naples in 1503. It was twice sacked by the French in 1799.
It quickly became the second city of the kingdom of Naples. It was an autonomous city, ruled by a diarchy composed of the City Council (which had varying names and composition over the centuries) and the King's Captain. It fell initially under the lordship of Niccolò dell'Isola, appointed by the people as People's Knight, then killed when he became a tyrant. Later, it fell under Pietro "Lalle" Camponeschi, Count of Montorio, who became the third side of a new triarchy, with the Council and the King's Captain. Camponeschi, who was also Great Chancellor of the kingdom of Naples, become too powerful, and was killed by order of Prince
Louis Of Taranto . His descendants fought with the Pretatti family for power for several generations, but never again attained the power of their ancestor. The last, and the one true "lord" of L'Aquila, was Ludovico Franchi, who challenged the power of the pope by giving refuge to Alfonso d'Este, former duke of
Ferrara , and the children of Giampaolo Baglioni, deposed "lord" of
Perugia . In the end, however, the Aquilans, always fond of their freedom, had him deposed and imprisoned by the king of
Naples .
The power of L'Aquila was based on the close connection between the city and its mother-villages (99, according to local tradition), which had established the city as a federation, each of them building a borough and considering it as a part of the mother-village.That is also why number 99 is so important in the architecture of L'Aquila, and a very peculiar monument, the Fountain of the 99 Spouts, was given its name to celebrate the ancient origin of the town. Fontana delle 99 Cannelle. The City Council was originally composed of the Mayors of the villages, and the city had no legal existence until King Carlo II of Naples appointed a "Camerlengo", responsible for city tributes (previously paid separately by each of its mother-villages). Later, the Camerlengo also took political power, as President of the City Council.
From its beginnings the city constituted an important market for the surrounding countryside, which provided it with a regular supply of food: from the fertile valleys came the precious saffron; the surrounding mountain pastures provided summer grazing for numerous transhumant flocks of sheep, which in turn supplied abundant raw materials for export and, to a lesser extent, small local industries, which in time brought craftsmen and merchants from outside the area.
Within a few decades L'Aquila became a crossroads in communications between cities within and beyond the Kingdom, thanks to the so-called "via degli Abruzzi", which ran from Florence to Naples by way of Perugia, Rieti, L'Aquila, Sulmona, Isernia, Venafro, Teano and Capua.
Negotiations for the succession of Edmund, son of Henry III of England, to the throne of the Kingdom of Sicily involved L'Aquila in the web of interests linking the Papal Curia to the English court. On 23rd December 1256, Pope Alexander IV elevated the churches of Saints Massimo and Giorgio to the status of cathedrals as a reward to the citizens of L'Aquila for their opposition to King Manfred who, in July 1259, had the city razed to the ground in an attempt to destroy the negotiations. The denuus reformator was Charles I of Anjou, but the city really became known beyond the borders of the Kingdom as a result of the exceptionally important event that took place on 29th August, 1294, when the hermit Pietro del Morrone was consecrated as pope .
The Celestinian pontificate gave a new impulse to building development, as can be seen from the city statutes. In 1311, moreover, King Robert of Anjou granted privileges which had a decisive influence on the development of trade. These privileges protected all activities related to sheep-farming, exempting them from customs duties on imports and exports. This was the period in which merchants from Tuscany (Scale, Bonaccorsi) and Rieti purchased houses in the city. Hence the conditions for radical political renewal: in 1355 the trade guilds of leather-workers, metal-workers, merchants and learned men were brought into the government of the city, and these together with the Camerario and the Cinque constituted the new Camera Aquilana. Eleven years earlier, in 1344, the King had granted the city its own mint.
The middle of the 14th century was a period of great crisis for L'Aquila, as for the whole of Europe. The city was struck so frequently by plague epidemics (1348, 1363) and earthquakes (1349) that it gave the appearance of having been abandoned. Reconstruction began soon, however. Many are the signs of the importance L'Aquila had reached by the turn of the 14th-15th century: Jewish families came to live in the city; the generals of the Franciscan Order chose the city as the seat of the Order's general chapters (1376, 1408, 1411, 1450, 1452, 1495); friar Bernardino of Siena, of the Franciscan order of the Observance, visited L'Aquila twice, the first time to preach in the presence of King Rene' of Naples, and in 1444, on his second visit, he died in the city.
The Osservanti branch of the Franciscan order had a decisive influence on L'Aquila. As a result of initiatives by Fra Giovanni da Capestrano and fra Giacomo della Marca, Lombard masters undertook, in the relatively undeveloped north-east of the city, an imposing series of buildings centring on the hospital of S. Salvatore (1446) and the convent and the basilica of S. Bernardino. The construction work was long and difficult, mainly because of the earthquake of 1461, which caused the buildings to collapse, and the translation of the body of S. Bernardino did not take place until 14th May, 1472. The whole city suffered serious damage on the occasion of the earthquake, and two years went by before repairs on the churches and convents began.
This period ended in the 16th century, when
Spanish viceroy
Philibert Van Oranje destroyed L'Aquila and established Spanish feudalism in its countryside. The city, separated from its roots, never developed again. It was destroyed, for the third time (the first was in
1258 , by King Manfredi of Sicily, while still unfinished), by an earthquake in
1703 . Successive earthquakes have repeatedly damaged the city's large
Duomo .
In more recent times, L'Aquila became one of the most conservative cities in Italy: in the 1970s all of Italy wondered when a novel by Alberto Moravia was seized because considered obscene, while local Catholic Archbishop protested the nudity of a statue of a young man, which has been on the fountain in front of the cathedral for centuries, and the more conservative groups of the city planned to ask the seizure of the £ 50 coin, because it represent a naked man. In the last years, Aquilan neocons returned to notoriety, when the municipal swimming pool was dedicated to fascist minister Adelchi Serena, whose main claim to fame was having said that racial laws against Jews had been too mild. The clamor of political parties and cultural groups nationwide was to no avail: the Mayor and City Council did not reverse the decision.
L'Aquila's sights include the
Forte Spagnolo , a huge Spanish fortress of the
16th Century ; the Romanesque basilica of
S. Maria Di Collemaggio (where pope
Pope Celestine V was crowned and buried); the basilica of St. Bernardino; and the medieval ''Fontana delle 99 Cannelle'', or Fountain of the 99 Spouts (whose source is still unknown) commemorating the 99 villages said to have established the city. A well-known city landmark is the Fontana Luminosa (Luminous Fountain), a sculpture of two women bearing large jars, built in the
1930s . The local cemetery includes the grave of Karl Ulrichs, a 19th‑century German
Gay Rights pioneer, who lived and died at L'Aquila: every year, gay people from all over the world meet at the cemetery to honour his memory.
The surrounding area boasts Roman ruins (the important Roman city of
Amiternum ), ancient monasteries, and numerous castles. The best-known of these is Rocca Calascio (used in the
1980s as the location for the movie
Ladyhawke ), which is the highest castle in
Italy and one of the highest in
Europe . Also nearby are several ski resorts for
Gran Sasso D'Italia , the highest of the
Apennines .
It is the home of
L'Aquila Rugby , five times italian champion.
- V. Bindi, ''Monumenti storici ed artistici degli Abruzzi'' (Naples, 1889), pp. 771 seq.
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L'Aquila has been twinned with these cities:
