Agnone
Discover Agnone
A concise introduction to Agnone, its geography, history and culture.
Introduction
Agnone stands at about 830 metres in the Alto Molise, on a ridge above the Verrino, with roughly four thousand seven hundred inhabitants.
The Pontificia Fonderia Marinelli has cast bells here since around the year 1000 and holds the papal privilege to display the papal arms; it can be visited and there is a bell museum beside it.
The old town is a long spine of stone streets with an unusual number of medieval churches for a place this size — a legacy of Venetian and Lombard merchant quarters.
Agnone was also a town of coppersmiths and goldsmiths, and a few workshops survive.
On 24 December the 'Ndocciata fills the main street with enormous fan-shaped fir torches carried by hundreds of people.
Around the town lie the beech forests of the Alto Molise, one of them a UNESCO biosphere reserve, and the Samnite sanctuary at Pietrabbondante is twenty minutes away.