Ascoli Piceno historical timeline

Ascoli has been a place of consequence since before Rome mattered, and its worst moment is also its most famous.

The Piceni

Asculum was the principal town of the Piceni, an Italic people with a distinctive culture of their own, and it was already substantial when Rome took the region in the early third century BC.

The Social War

In 91 BC the Italic allies demanded Roman citizenship and were refused. At Ascoli the population killed the Roman praetor Servilius, his legate, and the Roman residents of the city, and the war began. Pompeius Strabo besieged Ascoli and took it in 89 BC; the leaders were executed and the city was sacked. Rome then granted the citizenship the allies had asked for.

Roman and medieval

Rebuilt as a Roman municipium, it kept its grid, its theatre and its bridges. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries it was a free commune, rich on wool, and the tower-houses of the rival families date from then.

The papacy

From the later Middle Ages Ascoli belonged to the Papal States, which brought stability and stagnation in roughly equal measure.

September 1943

Ascoli was one of the first Italian cities to rise against the German occupation. On 12 September 1943 townspeople and disbanded soldiers fought at Porta Romana; the reprisals that followed were severe, and the city holds a gold medal for military valour for it.

Cecco

Francesco Stabili, known as Cecco d'Ascoli, physician, astrologer and poet, was burned at the stake in Florence in 1327; the city has never quite let it go, and one of its Roman bridges carries his name.

2016

The earthquake sequence of that year damaged the city and destroyed Arquata del Tronto in this province, where 51 people died. Reconstruction in the upper Tronto valley is still unfinished.