Vasto
Encyclopedia
Vasto is a town and comune
on the Adriatic coast of the Province of Chieti
in southern Abruzzo
, Italy
. The population is now just over 40,000.
, the Greek hero . The earliest archaeological relics date to 1300 BC, evidence of the first settlements.
Histonium was one of the chief towns of the Frentani
, situated on the coast of the Adriatic, about 9 km south of the promontory called Punta della Penna. The city is noticed by all the geographers among the towns of the Frentani, and we learn from the Liber Coloniarum that it received a colony, apparently under Julius Caesar
. It did not, however, obtain the rank of a colonia, but continued to bear the title of a municipium, as we learn from inscriptions. The same authorities prove that it must have been under the Roman Empire
a flourishing and opulent municipal town; and this is further attested by existing remains, which include the vestiges of a theatre, baths, and other public edifices, besides numerous mosaics, statues, and columns of granite or marble. Hence there seems no doubt that it was at this period the chief city of the Frentani. (Romanelli, vol. iii. p. 32.) Among the numerous inscriptions which have been found there, one of the most curious records the fact of a youth named L. Valerius Pudens having at thirteen years of age borne away the prize of Latin poetry in the contests held at Rome
in the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus. The name of Histonium is still found in the Itineraries of the fourth century and it probably never ceased to exist on its present site, though ravaged successively by the Goths
, the Lombards
, the Franks
, and the Arabs. Some local writers have referred to Histonium the strange passage of Strabo
in which he speaks of a place called Ortonium (as the name stands in the manuscripts) as the resort of pirates of a very wild and uncivilised character. The passage is equally inapplicable to Histonium and to Ortona
, both of which names naturally suggest themselves; and Kramer is disposed to reject it altogether as spurious.
Histonium has no natural port, but a mere roadstead; and it is not improbable that in the days of its prosperity it had a dependent port at the Punta della Penna, where there is good anchorage, and where Roman remains have also been found, which have been regarded, but probably erroneously, as those of Buca
. The inscriptions published by a local antiquarian, as found on the same spot, are in all probability spurious. (See Mommsen, lnscr. Regn. Neap. p. 274, App. p. 30; who has collected and published all the genuine inscriptions found at Histonium.)
Odoacer
deposed Romulus Augustulus and proclaimed himself ruler of all Italy in 476AD, he in turn being replaced by Theodoric the Great
, king of the Ostrogoths in 493AD. Following Theodoric's death in 526AD, the Western half of the Empire became fully controlled by Germanic tribes until Justinian's Byzantine
re-conquest, which included the province of Samnium
, of which Histonium was a key town. However soon after Justinian's death the city fell to the Lombards
becoming incorporated into the Duchy of Benevento
and, later, succumbing to the Franks
c774AD. Normans
under Robert Guiscard
in turn captured the Duchy of Benevento in 1053. Around 1076, Histonium was renamed Guastaymonis, or the Waste of Aimone , following raids, hence its current name. From the thirteenth century it was part of the Kingdom of Naples, which later merged into the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.
In the 15th century the city’s urban structure was transformed by the condottiero Giacomo Caldora, who had become its lord. The Caldoras built new city walls still seen today: Torre Bassano in Piazza Rossetti, Torre Diomede in Vico Storto del Passero, Torre Diamante in Piazza Verdi and Porta Catena, with Castello Caldoresco as its primary defensive outpost.
In 1566 Turkish Ottoman naval forces, led by Piyale Pasha
, destroyed much of the city by fire, including the Castello Caldoresco, the Church of Santa Margherita and the Palazzo d'Avalos (formerly a home of Vittoria Colonna
- close confidante of Michelangelo
- now the Musei di Palazzo d'Avalos).
Under the Spanish
rule of southern Italy, Vasto became fief of the Marquises d'Avalos; in the reign of Cesare Michelangelo (marquis from 1697 to 1729), Vasto reached its zenith.
Only superficially shaken by revolutionary events in 1799 (a short-lived Republic of Vasto was immediately overthrown by the sanfedista, or loyalists), the city's history was reflected in the nation's throughout the Restoration to the Unity of Italy when a liberal elite governed. The poet and scholar Gabriele Pasquale Giuseppe Rossetti was born in Vasto on 28 February 1783. Rossetti's published works include literary criticism, Romantic poetry such as his long poem Il veggente in solitudine of 1846, and his Autobiography. He is thought to be the basis of the character Pesca in Wilkie Collins
' 1860 novel The Woman in White
. Gabriele went into political exile in 1821, settling in London
, England. Gabriele died on 24 April 1854 and is buried in Highgate Cemetery
with his wife Frances Polidori
and daughter Christina Rossetti
.
In the age of Giovanni Giolitti
, Vasto changed its architectural and urban features. The historical centre was redrawn and the foundations were set for drastic alterations during the 1920s and 1930s, with Mussolini decreeing a name change to Istonio in 1938, the official name until the liberation of the city in 1944.
Despite a devastating landslide (1956) that dragged a significant part of the eastern ridge - now Via Adriatica - into the gorge below, the years following World War II
witnessed industrial, urban, parties and socio-cultural development. The city also discovered its tourist vocation: besides the progressive development of its beaches, Roman-era thermal baths, mosaics, cisterns and remains of an amphitheatre were found and restored.
Vasto is the home of Harvard University
's Summer Program in Abruzzo, an intensive Italian language program for Harvard students.
Comune
In Italy, the comune is the basic administrative division, and may be properly approximated in casual speech by the English word township or municipality.-Importance and function:...
on the Adriatic coast of the Province of Chieti
Province of Chieti
The Province of Chieti is a province in the Abruzzo region of Italy. Its capital is the city of Chieti.It has an area of 2,588 km², and a total population of 381,993...
in southern Abruzzo
Abruzzo
Abruzzo is a region in Italy, its western border lying less than due east of Rome. Abruzzo borders the region of Marche to the north, Lazio to the west and south-west, Molise to the south-east, and the Adriatic Sea to the east...
, Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
. The population is now just over 40,000.
History
According to tradition, the town was founded by DiomedesDiomedes
Diomedes or Diomed is a hero in Greek mythology, known for his participation in the Trojan War.He was born to Tydeus and Deipyle and later became King of Argos, succeeding his maternal grandfather, Adrastus. In Homer's Iliad Diomedes is regarded alongside Ajax as one of the best warriors of all...
, the Greek hero . The earliest archaeological relics date to 1300 BC, evidence of the first settlements.
Histonium was one of the chief towns of the Frentani
Frentani
The Frentani were an ancient people of central Italy, occupying the tract on the east coast of the peninsula from the Apennines to the Adriatic, and from the frontiers of Apulia to those of the Marrucini. They were bounded on the west by the Samnites, with whom they were closely connected, and from...
, situated on the coast of the Adriatic, about 9 km south of the promontory called Punta della Penna. The city is noticed by all the geographers among the towns of the Frentani, and we learn from the Liber Coloniarum that it received a colony, apparently under Julius Caesar
Julius Caesar
Gaius Julius Caesar was a Roman general and statesman and a distinguished writer of Latin prose. He played a critical role in the gradual transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire....
. It did not, however, obtain the rank of a colonia, but continued to bear the title of a municipium, as we learn from inscriptions. The same authorities prove that it must have been under the Roman Empire
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
a flourishing and opulent municipal town; and this is further attested by existing remains, which include the vestiges of a theatre, baths, and other public edifices, besides numerous mosaics, statues, and columns of granite or marble. Hence there seems no doubt that it was at this period the chief city of the Frentani. (Romanelli, vol. iii. p. 32.) Among the numerous inscriptions which have been found there, one of the most curious records the fact of a youth named L. Valerius Pudens having at thirteen years of age borne away the prize of Latin poetry in the contests held at Rome
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
in the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus. The name of Histonium is still found in the Itineraries of the fourth century and it probably never ceased to exist on its present site, though ravaged successively by the Goths
Goths
The Goths were an East Germanic tribe of Scandinavian origin whose two branches, the Visigoths and the Ostrogoths, played an important role in the fall of the Roman Empire and the emergence of Medieval Europe....
, the Lombards
Lombards
The Lombards , also referred to as Longobards, were a Germanic tribe of Scandinavian origin, who from 568 to 774 ruled a Kingdom in Italy...
, the Franks
Franks
The Franks were a confederation of Germanic tribes first attested in the third century AD as living north and east of the Lower Rhine River. From the third to fifth centuries some Franks raided Roman territory while other Franks joined the Roman troops in Gaul. Only the Salian Franks formed a...
, and the Arabs. Some local writers have referred to Histonium the strange passage of Strabo
Strabo
Strabo, also written Strabon was a Greek historian, geographer and philosopher.-Life:Strabo was born to an affluent family from Amaseia in Pontus , a city which he said was situated the approximate equivalent of 75 km from the Black Sea...
in which he speaks of a place called Ortonium (as the name stands in the manuscripts) as the resort of pirates of a very wild and uncivilised character. The passage is equally inapplicable to Histonium and to Ortona
Ortona
Ortona is a coastal town and municipality of the Province of Chieti in the Italian region of Abruzzo, with some 23,000 inhabitants.Ortona was the site of fierce fighting between German and Canadian forces during the Italian campaign in World War II...
, both of which names naturally suggest themselves; and Kramer is disposed to reject it altogether as spurious.
Buca
Buca is a district of İzmir Province of Turkey. It is one of the main districts of İzmir Metropolitan Municipality.Buca was one of the preferred settlement areas of İzmir's community of Levantines...
. The inscriptions published by a local antiquarian, as found on the same spot, are in all probability spurious. (See Mommsen, lnscr. Regn. Neap. p. 274, App. p. 30; who has collected and published all the genuine inscriptions found at Histonium.)
Post-Classical
After the collapse of the Western Roman EmpireWestern Roman Empire
The Western Roman Empire was the western half of the Roman Empire after its division by Diocletian in 285; the other half of the Roman Empire was the Eastern Roman Empire, commonly referred to today as the Byzantine Empire....
Odoacer
Odoacer
Flavius Odoacer , also known as Flavius Odovacer, was the first King of Italy. His reign is commonly seen as marking the end of the Western Roman Empire. Though the real power in Italy was in his hands, he represented himself as the client of Julius Nepos and, after Nepos' death in 480, of the...
deposed Romulus Augustulus and proclaimed himself ruler of all Italy in 476AD, he in turn being replaced by Theodoric the Great
Theodoric the Great
Theodoric the Great was king of the Ostrogoths , ruler of Italy , regent of the Visigoths , and a viceroy of the Eastern Roman Empire...
, king of the Ostrogoths in 493AD. Following Theodoric's death in 526AD, the Western half of the Empire became fully controlled by Germanic tribes until Justinian's Byzantine
Byzantine
Byzantine usually refers to the Roman Empire during the Middle Ages.Byzantine may also refer to:* A citizen of the Byzantine Empire, or native Greek during the Middle Ages...
re-conquest, which included the province of Samnium
Samnium
Samnium is a Latin exonym for a region of south or south and central Italy in Roman times. The name survives in Italian today, but today's territory comprising it is only a small portion of what it once was. The populations of Samnium were called Samnites by the Romans...
, of which Histonium was a key town. However soon after Justinian's death the city fell to the Lombards
Lombards
The Lombards , also referred to as Longobards, were a Germanic tribe of Scandinavian origin, who from 568 to 774 ruled a Kingdom in Italy...
becoming incorporated into the Duchy of Benevento
Duchy of Benevento
The Duchy and later Principality of Benevento was the southernmost Lombard duchy in medieval Italy, centred on Benevento, a city central in the Mezzogiorno. Owing to the Ducatus Romanus of the popes, which cut it off from the rest of Lombard Italy, Benevento was from the first practically...
and, later, succumbing to the Franks
Franks
The Franks were a confederation of Germanic tribes first attested in the third century AD as living north and east of the Lower Rhine River. From the third to fifth centuries some Franks raided Roman territory while other Franks joined the Roman troops in Gaul. Only the Salian Franks formed a...
c774AD. Normans
Normans
The Normans were the people who gave their name to Normandy, a region in northern France. They were descended from Norse Viking conquerors of the territory and the native population of Frankish and Gallo-Roman stock...
under Robert Guiscard
Robert Guiscard
Robert d'Hauteville, known as Guiscard, Duke of Apulia and Calabria, from Latin Viscardus and Old French Viscart, often rendered the Resourceful, the Cunning, the Wily, the Fox, or the Weasel was a Norman adventurer conspicuous in the conquest of southern Italy and Sicily...
in turn captured the Duchy of Benevento in 1053. Around 1076, Histonium was renamed Guastaymonis, or the Waste of Aimone , following raids, hence its current name. From the thirteenth century it was part of the Kingdom of Naples, which later merged into the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.
In the 15th century the city’s urban structure was transformed by the condottiero Giacomo Caldora, who had become its lord. The Caldoras built new city walls still seen today: Torre Bassano in Piazza Rossetti, Torre Diomede in Vico Storto del Passero, Torre Diamante in Piazza Verdi and Porta Catena, with Castello Caldoresco as its primary defensive outpost.
In 1566 Turkish Ottoman naval forces, led by Piyale Pasha
Piyale Pasha
Piyale Pasha , born in Viganj on the Pelješac peninsula, was a Croatian Ottoman admiral between 1553 and 1567 and an Ottoman Vizier after 1568. He was also known as Piale Pasha in the West or Pialí Bajá in Spain; )....
, destroyed much of the city by fire, including the Castello Caldoresco, the Church of Santa Margherita and the Palazzo d'Avalos (formerly a home of Vittoria Colonna
Vittoria Colonna
Vittoria Colonna , marchioness of Pescara, was an Italian noblewoman and poet.-Biography:The daughter of Fabrizio Colonna, grand constable of the kingdom of Naples, and of Agnese da Montefeltro, Vittoria Colonna was born at Marinoa fief of the Colonna family in the Alban Hills near Rome.Betrothed...
- close confidante of Michelangelo
Michelangelo
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni , commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art...
- now the Musei di Palazzo d'Avalos).
Under the Spanish
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
rule of southern Italy, Vasto became fief of the Marquises d'Avalos; in the reign of Cesare Michelangelo (marquis from 1697 to 1729), Vasto reached its zenith.
Only superficially shaken by revolutionary events in 1799 (a short-lived Republic of Vasto was immediately overthrown by the sanfedista, or loyalists), the city's history was reflected in the nation's throughout the Restoration to the Unity of Italy when a liberal elite governed. The poet and scholar Gabriele Pasquale Giuseppe Rossetti was born in Vasto on 28 February 1783. Rossetti's published works include literary criticism, Romantic poetry such as his long poem Il veggente in solitudine of 1846, and his Autobiography. He is thought to be the basis of the character Pesca in Wilkie Collins
Wilkie Collins
William Wilkie Collins was an English novelist, playwright, and author of short stories. He was very popular during the Victorian era and wrote 30 novels, more than 60 short stories, 14 plays, and over 100 non-fiction pieces...
' 1860 novel The Woman in White
The Woman in White
The Woman in White can refer to:*The Woman in White , an 1859 novel written by Wilkie Collins*The Woman in White , a 2004 Andrew Lloyd Webber musical based on the novel...
. Gabriele went into political exile in 1821, settling in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, England. Gabriele died on 24 April 1854 and is buried in Highgate Cemetery
Highgate Cemetery
Highgate Cemetery is a cemetery located in north London, England. It is designated Grade I on the English Heritage Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in England. It is divided into two parts, named the East and West cemetery....
with his wife Frances Polidori
Frances Polidori
Frances Mary Lavinia Polidori, later Rossetti, is noted for her family connections rather than in her own right; in particular, two of her children were co-founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and another became a famous poet.Frances was the daughter of Italian exile Gaetano Polidori and...
and daughter Christina Rossetti
Christina Rossetti
Christina Georgina Rossetti was an English poet who wrote a variety of romantic, devotional, and children's poems...
.
In the age of Giovanni Giolitti
Giovanni Giolitti
Giovanni Giolitti was an Italian statesman. He was the 19th, 25th, 29th, 32nd and 37th Prime Minister of Italy between 1892 and 1921. A left-wing liberal, Giolitti's periods in office were notable for the passage of a wide range of progressive social reforms which improved the living standards of...
, Vasto changed its architectural and urban features. The historical centre was redrawn and the foundations were set for drastic alterations during the 1920s and 1930s, with Mussolini decreeing a name change to Istonio in 1938, the official name until the liberation of the city in 1944.
Despite a devastating landslide (1956) that dragged a significant part of the eastern ridge - now Via Adriatica - into the gorge below, the years following World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
witnessed industrial, urban, parties and socio-cultural development. The city also discovered its tourist vocation: besides the progressive development of its beaches, Roman-era thermal baths, mosaics, cisterns and remains of an amphitheatre were found and restored.
Vasto is the home of Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
's Summer Program in Abruzzo, an intensive Italian language program for Harvard students.