Amandola

Amandola rests on three hills, and the three hills bear the names of the castles that were there before the town existed: Agello, Leone and Marrubbione. In the middle of the thirteenth century the three formally united and the free Comune was born; they are still on the coat of arms, and with them an almond tree, because tradition derives the name from an almond tree that stood where piazza Risorgimento is today — la mannola, in the dialect of Fermo. The first statutes date from 1265, and then the Comune built itself a body: a little over two kilometres of walls with five gates, of which only that of San Giacomo remains, and three squares with three distinct trades — the Platea Animalium for the cattle fairs, the Platea Magna for assemblies and festivities, the Platea Vallelonga for the market. Between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance it was famous for weaving.

The older history, by contrast, has been rewritten recently. For a long time it was believed that ancient Interamnia Picena lay in nearby Comunanza; research in the twenty-tens placed it instead inside the territory of Amandola, while the campaigns of the University of Pisa in 2014 and 2015 showed that at Comunanza stood another city, Novana, which was a forum, then a prefecture and finally a municipium. Two neighbouring towns, in short, exchanged their Roman names within a few years of excavation. More recent is the sack of 1798, when the French republican army punished an attempt at resistance and went so far as to profane the sarcophagus of the Blessed Antonio; and the earthquake of 24 August 2016, which damaged the town. The municipal territory, one of the largest in the province of Fermo, has forty-eight hamlets and lies inside the national park of the Sibillini Mountains.