Termoli historical timeline

Termoli has been raided, sacked, rebuilt and industrialised, and the shape of the borgo records most of it.

Origins

A settlement existed here in antiquity, probably Frentanian and then Roman, on the same headland for the same reason: it is the only defensible point on this coast.

Normans and Swabians

The town became a diocese and was fortified under the Normans. Frederick II rebuilt the castle in 1247 after an Adriatic raid, and the tower that stands today is essentially his.

Raids

In 1566 an Ottoman fleet under Piyale Pasha attacked the town, burned much of it and carried off part of the population. The cathedral lost its bell tower and the walls were rebuilt afterwards.

The cathedral saints

The relics of Saint Basso were held here from the Middle Ages, and in 1945 the long-lost relics of Saint Timothy, walled up for centuries, were rediscovered under the crypt.

Fishing and the railway

The Adriatic railway arrived in the nineteenth century and changed the town more than anything since the Normans: Termoli grew outside its walls for the first time, as a fishing and trading town with a station.

Under the Bourbons

Through the early modern centuries Termoli was a small, poor, walled diocese town of a few thousand people, living off fishing and the coastal trade, and repeatedly reduced by malaria on the marshy ground behind it.

Industry

From the 1970s a large car-components plant was built inland of the town as part of the state's southern development programme, and it remains the biggest employer in Molise. The town's fortunes have followed it.