Everything about Pontecorvo totally explained
Pontecorvo is a town in the
province of Frosinone,
Lazio,
Italy. Its population is 13,400.
History
The village lies under Rocca Guglielma, a medieval fortification perched on an inaccessible spur. It name derives from the
pons curvus, "curved bridge", that may still be seen spanning the Liri in the center of the town that grew around it in the course of the Middle Ages. The curve of the bridge was intended to divert timbers that might strike its piers during floods. The folk etymology of
corvo, "crow", symbol of the "black monks", the
Benedictines of the
abbey of Monte Cassino, within whose secular territory, the
Terra Sancti Benedicti, Pontecorvo lay, is displayed in the town's modern coat-of-arms, which represents a crow surmounting a curved bridge.
In Roman times the agricultural region was governed from
Aquinum, the modern Aquino. Some Roman remains have been retrieved from a
villa site at Sant'Oliva. The medieval commune dates from 860, when Rodoaldo, the
Lombard gastaldo of Aquino, erected the first version of the walled fortification on the
rocca, intended to guard the bridgehead from
Saracen intruders coming up the Liri. The castle's chapel seems to have been dedicated to
Saint Bartholomew; on the ruins of the Lombard
castello was erected the earliest Cathedral of San Bartolomeo of which the
campanile was a rebuilding of the castellan's tower. Two medieval quarters developed
Cività within the walls and
Pastine in the meadows between the city walls and the river. The little bridgehead settlement formed part of the
County of Capua; there in 866
Louis II, Holy Roman Emperor, set up camp at Pontecorvo in campaigns against the Saracens. In 960 Atenulf succeeded in attaching Pontecorvo to his gastaldate of Aquino; at his death his lands were divided into a county of Aquino and a county of Pontecorvo.
In 1065 the
Normans conquered the region and attached Pontecorvo to the Norman county of
Gaeta, but the
abbot of Monte Cassino purchased it in 1105, and maintained a precarious hold on it for over four centuries. The first communal statute, among the earliest in the
Kingdom of Naples, was granted in 1190, signalling a new era of civic self-confidence in a period in which Pontecorvo was briefly conquered and ruled by
Roger II of Sicily, was claimed by the papacy, and was sacked by
Charles of Anjou. During the
Western Schism, Pontecorvo allied with
antipope Clement VII in opposition to the local power of Monte Cassino.
Although in the middle of the
Kingdom of Naples, the town was an enclave of the
Papal States from
1463, when the
comune placed itself under papal jurisdiction, until captured by the
French army in the
Napoleonic Wars. After having been proclaimed
King of Italy in
1805,
Napoleon created Ponte Corvo a
principality for his General
Jean Baptiste Bernadotte. The principality was nominally sovereign, but the Prince did have to take an oath to the King. It was short-lived, however, and in
1815 the town was ceded back to the Papal States. In 1820 the 'Republic' of Pontecorvo seceded from the Papal States, but Papal rule was restored in 1821. In 1860 it joined
Benevento, the other southern Italian papal enclave, in being united with the new Kingdom of
Italy.
The town was destroyed during
World War II, and rebuilt in a modern style.
Princes of Pontecorvo
The descendants of Achille's brother Lucien still unofficially use the title for the heir to the
Prince Murat, and it's currently used by Joachim Murat (born 1973), although the reign of the Murat family, lasting only three years during the occupation of Napoleon Buonaparte, ended in 1815. Since Bernadotte's accession as
King of Sweden in
1818, the arms of Pontecorvo are a part of the Swedish
Greater Coat of Arms.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Pontecorvo'.
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