Bisaccia

The town stands at 860 metres on what geologists call a zatterone, a raft: a bank of conglomerate rock held together by a clay binder, wedged between two ravines — the Vallone dei corvi and that of the Ferrelli — formed over time by masses of mud and debris sliding down the valley. On the hill of the old cemetery excavations have found traces of huts of the middle Bronze Age, of about fourteen hundred years before Christ, covered by houses of the archaic period and these in turn by the settlement of the fourth century. In the ninth century before Christ the Oliveto-Cairano culture arrived here, come from the Adriatic coast: having landed in Apulia near the Ofanto, it went up the river and founded villages at Cairano and Bisaccia, replacing the Bronze Age inhabitants and leaving a necropolis with pit graves. About the name there are three hypotheses: from the Latin bis facta, «made twice», from vis and acies, or from castrum Byzacii.

Under the Normans Bisaccia became a fief, and the Catalogus Baronum says exactly what it was worth: in time of peace its lord had to supply six mounted soldiers and twelve servants, in time of war double that; since each soldier cost twenty ounces of gold, the minimum income of the fief in the twelfth century was sixty ounces of gold a year. In 1246 Frederick the Second took the fief from Riccardo di Bisaccia, who had taken part in the conspiracy of Capaccio: he had the castle restored, used it as a prison and came here in 1250. Local tradition says he also made it a hunting residence, and that he renamed the nearby hill of the Formicoso Monte Sano because he went hawking there. In that same castle, in 1254, Manfred took refuge, hunted by the pope's army. Bisaccia was then a bishop's seat for four centuries, until 1513, when the diocese was merged with that of Sant'Angelo dei Lombardi; and among its feudal lords was Giovanni Battista Manso, friend of Torquato Tasso, who in 1588 was his guest here.