Solofra

In the sixteenth century this community bought its own freedom. When Ercole Zurlo backed the attempt of general de Lautrec to invade the south and the Aragonese came out victorious, the fief was taken from him; it passed first to the crown lands and then to Ludovico della Tolfa, and at that point the people of Solofra, strong in their own economy, decided to buy it back, becoming a privileged universitas demaniale. What followed, from 1535 to 1555, was one of the most prosperous periods in their history: free of a feudal lord, they could trade their craft products as they wished. It was in those years that they built the great Collegiata, pulling down the pieve that had become too small for the community.

The interval was short: Spanish rule and the debts contracted by the universitas forced them to sell the fief to the Orsini of Gravina, who held it until the abolition of feudalism, in 1809. They sold it to Beatrice Ferrella Orsini, but they did not give up the rights they had won — the use of the waters, of the ovens, of the mills — and the new feudal lady had to sign new statutory articles. It was not enough: in 1577 a suit was brought against her for not respecting the Statutes, for taking for herself part of the water the workshops needed, and for abusing the common land. The ducal palace too was a quarrel: she built it very close to the Collegiata, as a manifesto of her own power, and the work was probably sabotaged, because it collapsed and was then rebuilt where it stands today. Water, in the end, was the point: the tanning of leather has been the trade of this place for centuries, and Solofra is still one of the four Italian centres of it.