Il ruolo della “piazza Maggiore” nel contesto della Montanea Aprutii. Il caso di Amatrice

In the context of the 13th century, the Montanea Aprutii, including Amatrice, Leonessa, Antrodoco, Cittaducale, and Cittareale, was fragmented into small autonomous settlements due to the feudal system. The territorial reform program initiated during the Swabian era and continued under the Angevins aimed to consolidate populated centres to improve military, economic, and fiscal control. The new towns adopted advanced urban schemes, like those used for the French bastides, characterized by quad­rangular central squares and a regular arrangement of blocks. The city of Amatrice, according to modern historiography, appears to have had a main square located centrally from its incep­tion, marked by the presence of a civic tower, which, however, exhibits more archaic characteristics compared to the uniform, homogeneous, and orthogonal layout of towns like Antrodoco, Cittaducale, and Cittareale. The idea of a ‘Piazza Maggiore’ at the centre of the city is based on two critical readings: on the one hand, the comparative anal­ysis of towns founded during the Angevin era highlights the consistent presence of a central square; on the other, an 18th­cen­tury source records an assembly in 1293 in the ‘Piazza Maggiore’ near the ‘Regio Campanile’, identified with the current Civic Tower. This study aims to examine historical sources in relation to the architectural structures observable before the 2016 earth­quake, in order to accurately identify the main square of medieval Amatrice.