Anzano di Puglia

Of all the comuni of Apulia this is the only one on the Tyrrhenian side of the Apennines: the water that rises here, the Fiumarella stream, ends up in the Ufita and so in the Tyrrhenian Sea, not in the Adriatic. The village sits at 760 metres in the Daunian Mountains, crossed still by the drove road that came down from Pescasseroli to Candela with the flocks. A stone slab found by chance in the fields bears the ancient name, Anxanum, and some picture here the inn where Horace stopped on his way from Rome to Brindisi. The first document that names it dates from 879.

Twice it has changed province, and each time it was given a new name as well. Detached from Irpinia and joined to the Capitanata by royal decree in 1929, together with neighbouring Monteleone, two years later, in 1931, it stopped being Anzano degli Irpini and became Anzano di Puglia. In between, the Irpinia and Vulture earthquake of 1930 brought it to its knees and it was rebuilt almost entirely: three years running remade its province, its houses and its name.