L'Aquila historical timeline

L'Aquila is a made city rather than a grown one, and it has been unmade repeatedly.

The ninety-nine castles

Founded in the mid-thirteenth century under Frederick II and his son Conrad IV, L'Aquila was created by gathering the populations of the surrounding fortified villages into a single new town. The tradition is that ninety-nine castles contributed, each building its own quarter, church and fountain spout — hence the ninety-nine spouts, and the ninety-nine strokes rung nightly from the civic tower. The number is symbolic rather than a census, but the mechanism was real.

Celestine V

In 1294 the hermit Pietro da Morrone was crowned pope at Collemaggio as Celestine V. He issued a bull granting full indulgence to anyone entering the basilica on a particular day, the first such indulgence in the Church, and then abdicated after five months — the gran rifiuto Dante condemned him for. The indulgence has been celebrated every year since, and UNESCO listed it in 2019.

Wealth and decline

The city grew rich on wool and on saffron, and in the fifteenth century was one of the largest in the kingdom of Naples. Spanish rule, the Forte Spagnolo built to control rather than defend it, and the earthquake of 1703 ended that.

6 April 2009

At 3.32 in the morning a magnitude 6.3 earthquake struck. 309 people died, tens of thousands were displaced, and the entire historic centre was sealed off. Residents lived in coastal hotels and temporary settlements for years. Reconstruction began slowly, has been the subject of trials and inquiries, and is still not finished.