Canosa in the history

Canosa di Puglia is a productive agricultural town in the district of Bari (population 32000; 154 m.slm), situated in the north-west side of Murge table-land, from which it dominates the valley of Ofanto and the so called «Tavoliere delle Puglie», extending from Vulture mountain to Gargano and to the Adriatic seaboard. Canosa has always been seen as the main archaelogical centre in Apulia and stands for one of the main far-sighted towns in the region. Vases and other valuables of Canosa are still kept in the most important museums and private collections in the world but, naturally, several tokens of her glorious past are scattered all over the present town and the territoy roundabout. Founded by Diomedes, the legendary Homeric hero, Canosa was considered one of the most important local towns in Daunia first and then in Apulia. The first human beings’ footsteps on its fertile soil (called «Diomedes’s fields») date back to the Neolithic Age (6000-3000 BC) and increased during the Metal Age. In the XII century BC the whole region had to receive new inhabitants, «Iapigi», who, before long, would be named «Dauni» in the northern Apulia. Between the VIII and the VII century BC, the archaic hut village called Torricelli grew up along the plain of the Ofanto. It was a well-assorted village with its aristocratic buildings and graves rich in kits belonging to the emergent social order of the so called «princes dauni». As a productive commercial town, famous for ceramic art, had been for some time influenced by the Hellenic culture which, during the IV century BC, gave it a Greek-polis town-planning model. The earliaest contacts with the Empire date back to 318 BC, when the town signed an alliance treaty with Rome, and received the Romans after Hannibal’s victory in 216 BC at Cannae, a small village near here. As a Roman Municipium since 88 BC and well-known for the manufacture of wool, the so called «Town of Emperors» had to undergo a town-planning intervention after the Roman style. The most important signs of the Roman itinery are: Via Traiana, probably built in 109 AD, and the water-cystern of Herod Attic dating back to 141. The Emperor Antonino Pious turned the town into a Colony called Aurelia, Augusta, Pia, Canusium. At the end of the III century, the town became the provincial capital of «Apuliae et Calabriae». Since the IV century it would have been the seat of the most important diocese in Apulia. The «Town of Bishops», with a wide episcopal quarter and magnificent places of worship, was at the height of its power during St. Sabine’s episcopacy (514-566). Seat of the chamberlain during the Longobard Age (between the VII and the VIII century), it had to put up with several Saracens’ravages in the following century. It regained importance between the XI and the XII century under the Normans, because of Boemondo d’Altavilla’s interest in this town. But, after the Swabians, it began a decline that lasted until the XVIII century under many feudal overlords: Orsini del Balzo, Grimaldi di Monaco, Affaitati from Barletta, Capece Minutolo from Naples.