Frosinone (; local dialect: ) is a comune (municipality) in the Italian region of Lazio, administrative seat of the province of Frosinone.Provincia di Frosinone (FR) – Italia: Informazioni, comuni-italiani.it. Accessed March 9, 2023. It is about southeast of Rome, close to the Rome-Naples A1 Motorway. The city is the main city of the Valle Latina ("Latin Valley"), an Italian geographical and historical region that extends from south of Rome to Cassino.Giuseppe Ponzi, Osservazioni geologiche fatte lungo la Valle Latina, Roma, 1849.
Until the 19th century, it was a village with a rural vocation, while from the 20th century, it became an important industrial and commercial centre. Traditionally considered a Volscian city, with the name of Frusna and then the Roman of Latium adiectum as Frùsino, over the course of its millenary history it has been subjected to multiple devastations caused by its geostrategic position. As a consequence of this, as well as of destruction due to seismic events (the most ruinous of which occurred in September 1349), it retains only rare, albeit significant, traces of its past.
Etymology
Frusĭno (this is the Latin name) was at the time inhabited by the people of the Volsci, albeit included in the territory of the Hernici. The Volscian name of the city would be Frusna or Fruscìno, whose etymology is controversial; however, various hypotheses have been tried: the first would make the name derive from the Greek root (portis: heifer); a second, observing the assonance with Etruscan roots, links the name to a hypothetical Etruscan gens Fursina (or alternatively, Frusina or Prusina).
These have been accompanied by a more recent hypothesis, which, based on the links between the pre-Roman Italic civilizations, and in particular the Etruscan one, with the Akkadian-Sumerian peoples, posits similar influences also for toponyms: according to this, Frusna would have the meaning of "Land sprinkled by rivers".
History
Ancient age The first traces of human presence around modern Frosinone date from the Lower Paleolithic (around 250,000 years ago). The earliest settlements in the area are from around 4,000 years ago, including late Bronze Age remains in what is now the upper part of the city (12th–10th century BC) and 7th–6th century BC sepultures. 21 tombs from a Volscan necropolis were found in the Frosinone centre.
The city was founded in the territory of Hernicians by the Volsci in the 6th century BC with the name of Fruscìno or Frusna, as a strategic outpost in front of the impregnable fortress of Aletrium (today known as Alatri).
It was subjugated by the Romans in 386 BC during their advance against the Volsci in Valle del Sacco, then transformed into a municipium under the Roman garrison. The taking of the urban centre of Frosinone, which then as today is located in the centre of the Sacco Valley, determined an important strategic victory for the Romans, who with this city could easily control all transits and commercial traffic between the north and the south of the peninsula.
In 306 BC, the city took part in the Hernic League against Rome; defeated and sacked, it lost much of its territories to the nearby Ferentino. Later, during the Second Punic War, it was devastated by Hannibal's armies, to which it refused to surrender. This event earned it the appellative, given by Silius Italicus, of Bellator Frusino, which still stands out in the city coat of arms: .Reported by Silius Italicus, VIII, p. 398
Silio Italico also praises Frusino during the listing of the Roman allies in the Battle of Canne ("a duro Frusino haud imbellis aratro", VIII, p. 398). Even Greek writers cited it in their writings, while among the Romans, later, Decimo Giunio Giovenale highlighted the tranquillity of the city.
Many ancient writers, including Tito Livio, Cassio Dione, Silio Italico, Festo Pomponio, Floro, the aforementioned Juvenal, and Marco Tullio Cicerone (Cicero) note the city of Frusino not only for mere historical facts, but also for the virtues of its inhabitants. Cicero himself in the territory of Frosinone owned a villa or a property, as it is possible to guess from a letter sent to his friend Atticus.Cicero, Epistulae ad Atticum XI, p. 13.
Despite the political and military troubles, Frusino was a prefecture and a municipality with all the rights that Roman citizenship entailed. The city obtained citizenship rights and became a colony in Roman imperial times, when part of its lands was assigned to Roman legionaries. As some historians report, the walls were built to defend the city. It was embellished with buildings, monuments and statues, which wars, the passing of time, and the neglect or foolishness of men have ruined, although in recent decades numerous artefacts have been found preserved in various museums, for example, the famous statue of Mars located in Rome, at Villa Albani, which was found in 1744 in the area that is still called Colle Marte today.Ignazio Barbagallo, Frosinone, Lineamenti storici dalle origini ai giorni nostri.
The sources are obscure on the spread of Christianity in Frosinone, but it is believed that an ancient diocese existed; the city was the birthplace of two popes, Pope Ormisda and Pope Silverio (the only case of two popes father and son), today patrons of the city.
Medieval age After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, Frosinone was destroyed several times by foreign invaders; in the early Middle Ages it was an agricultural centre of the Duchy of Rome. In the 13th century, it became the capital of a duchy assigned to the Gaetani, and from that century it was occasionally the seat of the rector of Campagna and Marittima, together with other cities of the papal province such as Ferentino, Anagni and Priverno. In 1350, it was damaged by an earthquake.
At the beginning of the 14th century, the city was dominated by the nearby and powerful Alatri, in turn, conquered by Francesco de Ceccano and his Ceccanesi troops for thirty years.
Modern age In the 16th century it was devastated by the Landsknecht, who brought the plague there, immediately followed by French and Florentine troops, at the same time as the Sack of Rome. The fortress, destroyed, was rebuilt; whose main entrance portal would have been designed by Michelangelo.
New destruction occurred with the occupation by the Spanish troops at war against Pope Paul IV in 1556: its fortress was strategically important for the control of the whole Sacco valley and for the defence of Rome. Following the treaty of Cave (1557) the residence of the pontifical governors of the province of Campagna and Marittima was definitively fixed in Frosinone; the Campagna e Marittima will then take the name of the Apostolic Delegation of Frosinone.
Frosinone steadily expanded its population in modern times, passing from around 2,000 people in the mid-17th century to the over 10,000 it had at the Unification of Italy (late 19th century). At the same time a new architectural and urban development began, with the construction or renovation of monuments and places of worship, and in the nineteenth century the construction of new important roads, on all the Via Nova (current Corso della Repubblica) and Viale Roma, new access to the city.
Worthy of note was the attitude of the Frosinone population during the French occupation and the Roman Republic, to which two Frosinone people, Giuseppe De Matthaeis and Luigi Angeloni, who became Tribunes of the Republic adhered: the population, around 1798, rebelled against the French troops and for this reason, the city was put to fire and sword and sacked (the anti-French revolt still echoes today through the Festa della Radeca, the Frosinone Carnival).
Contemporary age On the occasion of the journey of Pius IX in the province of Campagna and Marittima (13–20 May 1863) by train, solemn celebrations were organized, which ended with the blessing of the pope from the balcony of the Prefecture. During this visit, the pope promised extraordinary funding for the construction of an aqueduct intended to bring running water to the city by means of a hydraulic pump, an aqueduct completed and inaugurated on December 8, 1869.
Frosinone witnessed in 1867 the Agro Romano Campaign for the liberation of Rome with the Nicotera Column. The clash with the Garibaldini in Monte San Giovanni Campano, on the border with the Kingdom of Italy, is noteworthy. The relics of the "Nicola Ricciotti" Carbonara Sale, a patriot of Frosinone, are kept in the National Museum of Mentana.
Frosinone was removed from the Papal State and officially annexed to the Kingdom of Italy on September 17, 1870, three days before Porta Pia. In reality, the secular papal dominion over the city had in fact already ended on the evening of 12 September with the escape of the last apostolic delegate, Monsignor Pietro Lasagni, while the Italian troops were still along the Casilina, in the territory of Ripi, in waiting to resume the march towards Frosinone.Maurizio Federico, Frosinone e i suoi pompieri, 2006, p.33
In the second half of the nineteenth century, the inhabited area of the city was almost entirely enclosed within the ancient walls of the medieval "citadel", as it had been rebuilt several times after the various devastations suffered by German and Spanish armies in the 16th century and by the French at the end of the 18th century. According to the description of the local historian Vittorio Valle, the citadel "was bounded by a wall that had three cornerstones, the Porta Romana or della Valle, the Porta di Campania or Napoletana (today Porta Campagiorni) and the Rocca, now the venue of the Prefecture."Intervento del Consigliere Vittorio Valle contro la proposta di demolizione dell'Arco di Porta Campagiorni, delibera comunale n.13 del 22-04-1947, registro 42, Archivio Storico Comunale di Frosinone
After national unification, the city, which became the capital of the district of Frosinone in the province of Rome, underwent a building renovation and architectural embellishment of the town, as evidenced by the late nineteenth-century and Umbertine buildings of the current historic centre. The city became the seat of the offices of the sub-prefecture and the military district; from 1863 it was served by the state railway station, to which the local railway station (the Rome-Fiuggi-Alatri-Frosinone railway) was added.
In 1871 Domenico Diamanti became the first mayor of the city after the unification of Italy; he actively engaged in the modernization and rehabilitation of the city, then known as one of the most backward in Italy. He took care of the building renovation, the arrangement of the streets, the squares and the lighting of the urban centre. In 1874 a row of buildings of over 300 meters was built, known as the "Berardi palace", intended to meet the housing needs of the newborn State for employees and soldiers. At the centre of the structure rose the Isabella Theater, which was later called Politeama and then Cinema-Teatro Excelsior, still present today although inactive.Maurizio Federico, Frosinone e i suoi pompieri, 2006, p.34
In June 1873 Urbano Rattazzi, then President of the Council of Ministers, died suddenly in Frosinone while he was staying with a friend. For that occasion, numerous politicians and officials of the King arrived in the city. The villa where Rattazzi died, Casale Ricci in via Armando Fabi, is now completely abandoned.