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A SHORT HISTORICAL ACCOUNT

An ancient small town of Oscan origin, Aquilonia became one of the most important centres in Samnium.

It was destroyed by the Romans in 293 B.C., ravaged by barbarians in the 6^th century and then rebuilt by the Lombards. It was destroyed again by the Normans in 1078.

Till the end of the 15^th century, its population lived in the centre of Carbonara and in various hamlets, placenames of which still exist (Casalvetere, Pietrapalomba, Sassano, Pesco di Rago, S. Leonardo, etc.).

Afterwards, the fief of Carbonara belonged to the Del Balzo family, then to the Caracciolo family and, up to 1806, to the Imperiale family.

A violent antiliberal uprising in 1860 caused nine victims; it was followed by bloody repression and the old name of the town, Aquilonia, was re-established.

The old urban centre was damaged by recurrent earthquakes, the last of which in 1930 was catastrophic. The new town was rebuilt southwestward, about one kilometre away from the old one: its subdivision into small insulae (islands), its large, straight streets, and its moderate height buildings make Aquilonia a modern small town where staying is pleasant.

In the whole territory Samnite, Roman, and Lombard tombs are found, as well as abundant clay, stone, and metal material. In the locality named Groveggiante, a necropolis of the 4^th – 3^rd centuries B.C. has been explored.

Thanks to special recovering-rebuilding-reassembling interventions, the old centre of Carbonara-Aquilonia, which has been rediscovered after seventy years of neglect and looting, has been transformed into a striking Archaeological Park.

ETHNOGRAPHIC MUSEUM

The big ETHNOGRAPHIC MUSEUM of Aquilonia contains about 13,000 (thirteen thousand) original objects, which have been gathered with a painstaking piece of research: tools, implements, outfits and furniture, utensils and furnishings, finds and documents of all kinds, displayed in an evocative atmosphere, tell the stories and the everyday existence of many generations of the local community which have followed one another through the centuries, thus bringing back to life a lost world. All that material has not been arranged by collections, but only used (which makes this MUSEUM so peculiar and unique of its kind) to reconstruct with philological rigour house and work environments, real-life scenes that allow us to travel back to an old reality and to plunge as by magic into the millenary history of our civilization.

The Ethnographic Museum is a very effective teaching instrument, it is like a big book written using the silent, evocative language of the material culture, which fascinates the visitor and gets him to be emotionally involved.

The display, covering about 1,500 (one thousand five hundred) sq.m and an open-air fitted-out area, is divided into more than 130 (onehundred thirty) settings, which are grouped into 12 (twelve) thematic sections:

Ø peasants’ house and cattleshed

Ø agricultural activities and vegetable world

Ø trades

Ø food production

Ø folk traditions and anthropology

Ø local history

Ø archaeology

Ø stone material

Ø protoindustry

Ø animal world and wild plant life

Ø peasants’ food

Ø miscellaneous

The Ethnographic Museum of Aquilonia is, in its field, one of the richest, best organized, and most exhaustive museums in Italy: all aspects, even the least ones, of the community’s life in bygone days are shown andrigorously documented.

MUSEUM OF TRAVELLING TOWNS

A building in the Park, which has been put back into use and fitted for exhibition needs, houses a MUSEUM OF TRAVELLING TOWNS, containing historical documents, written texts, photos, period films, videos, and explanatory panels.

The Museum documents the vicissitudes of those Italian villages, such as Aquilonia, that owing to earthquakes had to move their sites over the centuries, and the communities of which have recently rediscovered and reasserted the value of the original sites, bringing them back to life.

ARCHAEOLOGICAL PARK

Less than one kilometer from the centre of Aquilonia, the ARCHAEOLOGICAL PARK constitutes the historical memory of its folk.

It is a big-sized Park, with the ancient town plan perfectly preserved. The ancient Carbonara, brought to light and reassembled, looks like a medieval Pompeii.

Besides the wonderful paving of the Piazza Municipio (Town Hall Square), where stood the two churches (San Giovanni and L’Immacolata), the Town Hall, the Magistrate’s Courthouse, the Grain Pool, and the Prison, you can also admire the remains of old palaces.

This wonderful Piazza, which has been reconstructed using the shapes of the missing palaces and churches as wings, acts as a background for music and traditional song concerts, rite and theatre performances, scenes and sketches of country life, historical commemorations, and film projection.

Inside the Park, the Palazzo Vitale, which is being restored, will become the seat of the Centro studi delle culture locali e del Mediterraneo (Institute for Local Cultures and for the Cultures of the Mediterranean Sea).

ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITES

- Abundant traces of Samnite and Roman urban conglomerations at Casalvetere, Tratturo Largo, and Pozzo Monticchio; tombs of the Lombard era at Contrada Mattina (the whole of the clay, stone and metal material of archaeological source related to necropolises and built-up areas is displayed in the Ethnographic Museum);

- remains of a castle in the locality named Pietrapalomba;

- Roman bridge of Pietra dell’Olio on the Ofanto river

INTERESTING MONUMENTS