Foligno (Fulginia, Fulginium or Fulginiae in Latin, Fuligni or Fulignu in fulginate) is an Italian town of 56 578 inhabitants in the province of Perugia in Umbria, is located in the center of the Umbrian Valley, crossed by the Topino river.
Religious architecture
Cathedral of San Feliciano
Palace of
the Canons
Basilica of Santa Maria Infraportas
Church of the
Most Holy Saviour
Sassovivo Abbey
Church of Santa Maria di
Pistia
Church of San Paolo Apostolo, designed by Massimiliano
Fuksas
Monastery of Santa Maria of Betlem
Church of Maria
Santissima of Constantinople in Fiamenga
Former Church of the
Holy Trinity in Annunziata or Nunziatella
Church of the Sacred
Heart
Church of the Good Shepherd
Church of San Paolo al
Miglio
Oratory of Sant'Arcangelo - hospitalization home Opera Pia
Bartolomeo Castori
Church of Santa Maria in Campis
Church of
San Nicolò
St. James Church
Church of Santa Angela
Former
Church of San Domenico - Auditorium of San Domenico
Church of
Sant'Agostino - Sanctuary of the Madonna del Pianto
Former church
of Santa Caterina - Auditorium of Santa Caterina
Monastery and
Church of Sant'Anna
Monastery and Church of Santa Lucia
Church
of San Giovanni dell'Acqua
Church of San Giuseppe (or Church of
Santa Margherita or della Trinità)
Church of Misericordia (or
Church of San Giovanni Decollato) - ex Istituto San Carlo - Teatro
San Carlo
Church of Sant'Apollinare (or Church of Death)
Church of San Francesco - Sanctuary of Santa Angela
Convent and
Church of San Francesco al Monte - Cappuccini
Civil
architectures
Palazzo Trinci
Town Hall
Orfini Palace
Piermarini Theatre
Military architectures
Rock of Rasiglia
Other places of interest
San Magno Bridge
Italian Center
for Contemporary Art
Monument to Giuseppe Piermarini
Ivan
Theimer Memorial Fountain
Printing Museum
Canape park
The municipal area is mainly mountainous, while the
capital city is completely in the plain (with some hilly offshoots),
in the Umbrian Valley, at the confluence of two rivers: the Topino
and the Menotre.
The highest inhabited center is the hamlet
of Curasci, which is located at 1,018 m a.s.l., while the lowest is
the hamlet of Budino, located at 196 m a.s.l. From a hydrographic
point of view, most of the municipal territory is in the Tiber
basin, therefore on the Tyrrhenian side of the Apennine ridge, while
a part, the Colfiorito Plateaus, is located on the Adriatic side.
The whole municipal area is located in an area with a high
seismic risk, according to the classification provided by the P.C.M.
n. 3274 of 20/03/2003, in "zone 1" with "catastrophic risk".
The only important city crossed by the river is Foligno, Foligno is the only city crossed by the Topino, whose course was regimented to protect the city from flooding in the first half of the nineteenth century by the engineer. Antonio Rutili (Foligno, 1799-1850). In Foligno there is an urban river park of the Topino.
The climate of the capital and the
surrounding plain is of a temperate sublitorial type with winters
that are not excessively cold (the average temperature in January,
the coldest month, is 4.5 ° C) and rather humid and summers
characterized by high but not torrid temperatures. Quite
pronounced is the phenomenon of thermal inversion. Autumn is warmer
than spring and is the wettest season of the year. Frosts and fogs
can occur between November and April while snowfalls are infrequent.
The climate of the upper hilly and mountainous part of the
municipality is instead that typical of the Central Apennines, of a
temperate subcontinental type: cold or very cold winters (on the
higher elevations), with even consistent snowfall and winds from the
North-East, uncertain springs. (on the Colfiorito plateau, for
example, snowfalls can also be produced in March or late April) and
rainy, cool summers, ideal for holidays, autumns which are also
rainy and which sometimes appear as a real anticipation of winter.
The protohistoric origin of Foligno dates back to the pre-Roman
Umbrian era, having been the city founded by the "Umbri Fulginates".
The Umbrian Fulginia (pre-Roman city whose foundation dates back to
the 10th century BC and of which there are records prior to 500 BC),
then Roman Fulginium, located in the pre-hill area near Santa Maria in
Campis (near the current central cemetery) in proximity of the ancient
Via Flaminia (which here divided into two branches) and the mouth of the
Topino river at the bottom of the valley (the ancient Umbrian Supunna or
Roman Timea), has left the modern city (probably built on a military
camp further downstream) the system of straight roads that intersect
perpendicularly. The roads are related to four Roman bridges still
existing on the ancient course of the Topino river. From 258 BC. it was
a prefecture and municipality, from 254 BC, registered in the Cornelia
tribe and had considerable importance during the imperial era.
In
476 it was subjected by Odoacre and then by the Goths from 493 to 550.
Subsequently it belonged to the Longobards who annexed it to the Duchy
of Spoleto and then to the Franks.
It belonged to the Duchy of Spoleto until 1198, when it was annexed
to the Papal State by Pope Innocent III. In 1255 the communal period
began and it was subjected first to the Empire and then to the Trinci
until 1439.
During the first half of the thirteenth century,
except for the short period (1237-1239) in which it allied itself with
Todi, Gubbio and above all with the very powerful and Guelph Perugia,
Foligno was firmly faithful to the Empire.
With Terni and Todi it
was a Ghibelline bulwark in Umbria (excluding the Trinci period), in the
XIII century it clashed in four bloody wars with the nearby Guelph
Perugia. The first was fought between 1248 and 1251, the second in 1254,
the third between 1282 and 1283 and the fourth between 1288 and 1289.
The first three were won by the Foligno, while Perugia prevailed in the
last which extended its sphere of influence to Foligno. According to the
historian Jean-Claude Maire Vigueur, «Grundman even claims that a
victory of Foligno would have opened the way in Umbria for a completely
different type of economic, political and cultural development, while
the domination of Perugia made it the South of the 'central Italy,
devoted mainly to agricultural activities and subordinated, from a
commercial and financial point of view, to Tuscan businessmen...'.
The Ghibelline faction, increasingly powerful until the death of
Federico II, was then supplanted by the Guelph one in 1254, but in 1268
we find the city once again governed by the Ghibellines by Ansaldo di
Filippo degli Anastasi.
In 1305, having defeated Corrado degli
Anastasi, with the appointment of Nallo Trinci as gonfalonier of
justice, or captain of the Guelph party and captain of the people, a
long period of noble government began for Foligno which ended in 1439
with the expulsion of Corrado Trinci by the hand of Cardinal Giovanni
Vitelleschi, charged by Pope Eugene IV de reductione communis et hominum
civitatis Fulginei ad obedientiam et gremium Ecclesiae.
In the
fourteenth century and in the first decades of the fifteenth century,
under the Guelph lordship of the Trinci, Foligno extended its borders to
Abruzzo (with Leonessa). This was a time of considerable economic
development for the city, with the affirmation of manufactures related
to the processing of wood, paper, yarns, ceramics and some metals
(including gold and silver).
In ancient times (from 20 May to 20
July of each year, from 1425 to 1816) a well-known fair was held in
Foligno, called the "Fiera dei Soprastanti", to which merchants from all
over Europe flocked.
With the return of papal dominion, Foligno returned to being
administered by municipal magistracies, even if their autonomy was more
nominal than substantial. Precisely in those years, in fact, the State
of the Church began its administrative and political reorganization in
order to be able to better control the suburbs. The strong contrasts
that arose after 1439 between the popular and the noble factions ended
in 1460 with the exclusion, granted by Pope Pius II to the city
aristocracy, of the popular class from the municipal council. Since then
Foligno had one of the most rigid oligarchic forms of the Papal State.
Foligno has always been the official supplier of hemp to the Papal
State, with which ropes for bells were mainly made. The main
cultivations of hemp developed in the western area of the city, in
correspondence with the current Fiamenga and Budino. During the French
occupation, two works of art made their way to France, both of which
were exhibited at the Louvre Museum thanks to the Napoleonic looting.
The first was Raphael's Madonna of Foligno, sent on 25 February 1797 to
the Louvre from the Church of the nuns of Sant'Anna. This was kept in
Rome and is now kept in the Vatican Pinacoteca. According to the catalog
published in the Bulletin de la Société de l'art français of 1936, the
second was the Polyptych of San Nicolò (1492) by Alunno da Foligno,
tempera on wood, taken from the church of San Nicolò, exported in 1811
which remained without predellas which remained in the Louvre.
Under the Papal State, the city shared its fate until its incorporation
into the Kingdom of Italy.
During the Second World War it was the site of an important airport,
barracks, military schools and war industries (in particular aeronautics
and food). For this reason it underwent numerous Anglo-American bombings
which destroyed it for about 80% and therefore the city was later
awarded the silver medal for civil valor.
In the history of the
city there have been numerous earthquakes, including catastrophic ones:
the most recent, of magnitude 6.1, dates back to 26 September 1997. The
earthquake, with its epicenter near the hamlet of Annifo, caused a lot
of damage to the city: they were most affected, compared to the city,
the mountain hamlets.
The main shock was followed by an
earthquake swarm that lasted for over a year.
The earthquake of
17:23 on 14 October 1997, of magnitude 5.5, with its epicenter between
Sellano and Preci, caused the collapse of the lantern of the Palazzo
Comunale (erroneously also called "tower"): the shock occurred during an
inspection by the fire brigade trying to secure the tower and was filmed
live on TV.
On 14 October 2007 the completion of the restoration
of the civic tower of the Palazzo Comunale was inaugurated.
Between 2008 and 2014, within the P.I.R. (integrated recovery plan), the
historic center is repaved and redeveloped: the sewage network, the
water network, the methane gas network, the electricity network and the
telephone network are redone from scratch.