Buccino

Buccino stands on a knoll at the edge of a wide karst plain that was once a lake, now drained and farmed, and its ancient name was Volcei. The motto still says so: around the coat of arms runs the phrase Ordo populusque Volceianus, the magistrates and the people of Volcei, on the Roman model. Livy relates that in 209 before Christ the Volceientes surrendered to the consul Quintus Fulvius Flaccus; in 90 before Christ, with the Social War and citizenship extended to the Italic peoples, the town was raised to a municipium; and in 178 the emperor Commodus took as his first wife Bruzia Crispina, daughter of a senator of Volceian family. Of the Roman city there remain a bridge and the Caesareum, the temple of the cult of the emperors, still partly visible in via Santo Spirito.

In the twelfth century the Normans built a castle that largely followed the ancient settlement, and the streets still keep the Roman plan; in that castle pope Urban VI found shelter while fleeing from Charles of Durazzo. Then came the earthquakes, in January 1466 and August 1561. On 16 September 1943 a British air raid killed a number of townspeople and a group of children who were playing near piazza San Vito, and a monument in piazza Municipio remembers them. Finally, on 23 November 1980, the earthquake partly destroyed the town: and in the slow, laborious rebuilding much of ancient Volcei came back to the light. Since 2003 an urban archaeological park, partly underground, ties together what was found.