Urbisaglia

Urbisaglia carries the name of a Roman city that is no longer there, and its ruin is so famous that Dante mentioned it. Urbs Salvia came into being as a colony in the second century before Christ and was rebuilt between the age of Augustus and that of Tiberius on a precise plan of monumentalisation; its decay began with the passage of Alaric's troops, in 408. Procopius of Caesarea, in the Gothic War, describes the wretched state to which the city was reduced in the sixth century, and in the Commedia Dante recalls its decay as an example of how little the works of men last. The inhabitants, meanwhile, went up little by little to the top of the hill, and from them was born the Castro de Orbesallia, that is, today's village. The digs in the Roman city began under the papal government; now it is an archaeological park.

For centuries Urbisaglia belonged to Tolentino, which appointed its podestà and kept a garrison in the castle to forestall the revolts of a people who could not bear that power. In 1497 pope Alexander VI granted Tolentino leave to build a fortress, and twelve men were put there to hold it. The people of Urbisaglia tried in 1564, with a petition to Pius IV: the outcome was favourable, but the pope died and everything stopped. Freedom came with Pius V, on 9 August 1569, when the village was placed directly under the Holy See. In the twentieth century, instead, the Giustiniani Bandini palace, next to the abbey of Chiaravalle di Fiastra, was the seat of an internment camp: it stayed in use from June 1940 to October 1943, and about a hundred internees passed through it, most of them Jews, Italians and refugees from Germany, Austria and the Balkans.