Agnone historical timeline

Agnone was a manufacturing town in the mountains for a thousand years, which is a rare thing in southern Italy.

Bovianum Vetus

A Samnite settlement stood in the area, and the great Samnite sanctuary at Pietrabbondante, twenty minutes away, was one of the religious centres of the confederation before Rome destroyed it.

The bells

The Marinelli family have been casting bells here since about the year 1000. The business has never left the town or the family, which makes it the oldest company in Italy, and its bells hang in churches across the world.

The Venetians

From the medieval period a Venetian merchant colony settled in Agnone, trading metalwork and giving the town a quarter, a church and a commercial network far larger than its size suggests. The Venetian lion is still carved in the old town.

Copper and gold

At its height Agnone had hundreds of workshops beating copper and working precious metal, supplying the whole kingdom of Naples. The trade survived into the twentieth century and then collapsed with the market for handmade pots.

Emigration

From the 1880s the town emptied towards the Americas, and again after the war towards northern Italy. Agnone has lost more than half its population since 1900 and is still losing it.

A town of schools

The metal trades needed drawing, chemistry and design, and Agnone supported schools and a public library out of proportion to its size from the nineteenth century; the technical institute here trained craftsmen for the whole province.

The war

The Sangro front ran north of here in 1943, and the mountain villages were fought over and in places destroyed.