Frosolone – The Village of Knives

Frosolone (Frescëlonë in Molise, Frusëlónë in Frosolonese dialect) is an Italian municipality of 2,797 inhabitants in the province of Isernia in Molise. The hypotheses which derive the name Frosolone from the Frosone, which some identify as the bird present in the municipal banner, must be considered Paretymologies, as well as that which associates it with an unidentified Samnite settlement cited by Livy, Fresilia and that according to which Frosolone it would have been founded by Benedictine monks coming from Frosinone, who would therefore have called the new settlement with the name of their place of origin.
Before the Roman age the area was inhabited by Samnite populations, as evidenced by the presence of polygonal megalithic wall enclosures, visible on the mountain above the town, in the Civitelle area. These remains belong to what is defined as a high-altitude settlement: a fortified settlement of not very large dimensions, probably intended to be inhabited only in certain periods of the year, with generically defensive functions.
As with many other centers in Molise, the medieval phase of the town ended drastically with the earthquake of 1456: according to what Antonino Pierozzi reports in his Chronicon, Frosolone was totally razed to the ground and there were 317 victims[16]; this information was then taken up by various authors, including Giovanni Antonio Summonte, who recalls how the town "largely fell, with the death of 318 people".
There are regular testimonies of Frosolone starting from the Spanish period; in this era it went through an intense phase of development: together with Agnone and Trivento it hosted one of the three bishop's residences of the diocese.
There is also a war fortification, which concerns very few centers in Molise, with the construction of an armed ravel in the area where today stands the so-called loggia dei pezzenti, the space known as Largo XX Settembre.
In the early years of the 19th century, Frosolone was one of the most populous inhabited centers in the Molise countryside: in the same period in which it was close to 4,000 inhabitants, Agnone had around 7,500, Boiano around 3,500, Campobasso around 5,500, Isernia around 6,900. The 1805 earthquake imposed a major setback in the country's development; this second catastrophe seems to have had an equally disastrous outcome as that of 1456: sources of the time define it as "almost entirely adequate for the ground", and report a figure (how reliable it is not known) of a thousand deaths and 46 injuries out of a population of 4,000 souls.
Source: Wikipedia