Francolise

In dialect the town is simply called La Torrë, the tower, and a silver tower with four battlements also stands on the municipal coat of arms. It is the castle, built by the Normans in the second half of the eleventh century on the hill that overlooks the town: under the Swabians it housed barons loyal to Manfred, under the Angevins it became the fief of Simon de Montfort, count of Avellino, and in the seventeenth century it ended up as the refuge of the brigand Domenico Colessi, known as Papone, and his men. Just outside the village there is still the Calena spring, disused today, which the Romans praised for its acidulous waters.

Those Romans had their country houses here. Between 1962 and 1964 the British School at Rome excavated two villas, at San Rocco and at Posto: the first, lived in from the end of the second century BC, started at about eight hundred square metres and ended up five times larger, with a mosaic peristyle, three big cisterns and a bath suite paved in cipollino marble. The most interesting part, though, is at the back: three rooms near the entrance were converted to industrial use, with vats for separating olive oil, a press and a kiln for firing bricks.