Rossano, also improperly called Rossano Calabro to distinguish it
from Rossano Veneto, is a hamlet of 36 623 inhabitants, currently
part of the municipality of Corigliano-Rossano, in the province of
Cosenza, in Calabria. The city is also known as Rossano the
Byzantine and Rossano city of the Codex, in homage to the Purple
Code, one of the oldest gospels in the world and kept for centuries
in Rossano (Diocesan and Codex Museum), included in the UNESCO
heritage list in the "World Memory" category.
On 22 October
2017, through a referendum, the merger process with the nearby
municipality of Corigliano Calabro began, which culminated on 31
March 2018 in the establishment of the new municipality of
Corigliano-Rossano.
The city of Rossano is located in the eastern strip
of the Sibari plain between the Sila and the Ionian coast. The
territory also includes part of the hills that precede the Sila and
the municipality was part of the Sila Greca mountain community and
housed its headquarters.
The territory includes soils of
different geological origin, with different characteristics (rocks,
clays, sands), which correspond to different types of flora. From
the landscape point of view, tree cultures dominate (olive groves,
citrus groves and orchards). In areas close to the coast there are
also pine forests. There are two monumental oak trees in the area (a
English oak and a Quercus virgiliana).
Rossano takes its name from the Greek rusion, ρύσιον ("who saves") and akron, άκρον ("promontory", "height") from which the medieval versions Ruskia or Ruskiané (Ρουσκιανή) or Rusiànon (Ῥυσιάνον) derive; according to another hypothesis instead it derives from the Roman family name to which the government of the "Castrum" could have been entrusted and which would have given the name of "Roscianum" to the urban center.
It is assumed
that it was founded by the enotri around the 11th century BC, passed
under the Magna Graecia control (VII-II century BC) and subsequently
became the Roman outpost in the control of the Sibari plain and in
the unsuccessful attempt to conquer the territories mountains of the
Sila, then occupied by bruzi. In the second century. Emperor Hadrian
built a port capable of accommodating 300 ships. Between 540 and
1059 Rossano experienced a phase of great social, artistic and
cultural splendor under the dominion of the Byzantines: seat of the
stratego, its strategic position - "the city attests its soul and
history in the face and in the site. an irregular prominence of the
first buttresses of the Sila, to which it looks at noon, stands on a
reddish wall of rock, banded and closed almost by a natural valley,
while to the north, facing the Ionian gulf, it is joined to the
marine plain by precipitous ridges. . "(G. Sapia, Historical Profile
of the city, Corigliano, 2001, 11) which constituted a natural
protection, together with the theory of walls and fortifications,
from external incursions - made it an attractive destination for
conquest by numerous invaders (Visigoths in 412, Lombards in 573,
Saracens from Sicily later) but it was never conquered.
Starting from the 6th and 7th centuries Rossano constituted a center
of irradiation of the Basilian monastic spirituality of the
Italo-Greek tradition, of which numerous traces and historical,
artistic and architectural testimonies are preserved. The city is
attested as the seat of an archdiocese as early as the 10th century,
a time when Rossano constituted one of the main centers of Byzantine
possessions in Italy and in which the city's religious institutes
formed men of culture such as the future antipope Giovanni Filagato
and Nilo da Rossano .
In the following centuries it passed
first under the rule of the Normans (1059 - 1190) and then of the
Swabians (1190 - 1266), preserving itself as a royal city and then a
free university, until the policy of infeudation followed by the
Angevins (1266 - 1442), and then by the Aragonese (1442 - 1504) and
by the Spaniards (1504 - 1714), under whom there was the repression
of some popular rebellions against the feudal system and fiscal
policies.
The feudal policies continued under the Austrian
viceroyalty (1714 - 1738) and with the Bourbons (1738 - 1860). The
Ruffo, Marzano, Sforza of Milan, Aldobrandini families and lastly
the Borghese of Rome were feudal lords, following the succession of
Olimpia Aldobrandini princess of Rossano, and remained so until the
end of feudalism (1806 in the kingdom of Naples); Bona Sforza
d'Aragona, Queen of Poland and Grand Duchess of Lithuania, from
1524, in succession of her mother Isabella, was also Princess of
Rossano and Duchess of Bari.
At the end of the eighteenth
century, Rossano became part of the brief experience of the
Neapolitan republic (1799) and during the French decade (1806 -
1815), when feudalism was abolished, it had a political and social
growth, prejudiced, however, by the devastating earthquake of 1836.
Already under the decade it became the district capital (28
municipalities) of the lower Calabria, subsequently the seat of the
subintendency, the district capital and the seat of the judge; with
the unit it was the seat of the court in 1865, the court of assizes
1875 and the military district and from 1894 to 1926 the seat of the
sub-prefecture. Still in the second half of the 19th century, it was
the center of numerous cultural circles and produced various
newspapers and periodicals; in 1876 the Jonica railway was
inaugurated and, after a few years, it benefited from the first
electric lighting and the first thermoelectric plants in Calabria.
In the twentieth century Rossano experienced all the events that
characterized the political and social life of the South and
ultimately of the whole of Italy: the Resistance and the liberation
struggles, emigration, the reconstruction of civil and democratic
life and finally the expectation of social and material well-being.
Starting from the 1950s, the city, like others in Calabria whose
historic core had developed inland in consideration of the
healthiness of the places as well as for the natural defenses,
continued its expansion mainly downstream and in the plain , crossed
by the major rail and road link infrastructures. The urban expansion
that took place in all directions in the vicinity of the railway
yard - with the creation of new densely populated neighborhoods,
schools, sports facilities, public and private services -
substantially saved the historic city from adulteration.
The
institutional process of merger in progress constitutes an
opportunity for a rethinking of the lines of development of the city
in the wider territory, reconsidering its history and its vestiges.