We have little news about the poet Pietro da Eboli. He is remembered not only for being the author of the Liber ad Honorem Augusti, where in a miniature he appears portrayed with tonsure, so it is thought to have been a cleric, but also of a didactic work, the De balneis Puteolanis, a piece on the c...

The Liber was written during a long and troubled period, most likely between the end of 1194, when Emperor Henry VI finally took possession of southern Italy, after defeating his rival, Tancred, and 1197, the year of his death. The work, dedicated to Henry VI himself, whose praises and deeds he prai...

Roger, known as the Great Count, was responsible for the conquest of Sicily, together with his brother Robert Guiscard. After the 1061 landing in Messina and the surrender of the city, the Normans invaded the Val Demone almost without difficulty and, with the town of Rometta, many strongholds fell. ...

Sicily was under Arab rule for about two hundred years, from 827 to 1072. During the Arab rule, the island enjoyed a period of economic and cultural prosperity. New cultivation techniques were introduced, water resources were rationalized, mosques were built (it is not by chance that Palermo, the se...

In the autumn of 2002, after an intense earthquake off the coast of Filicudi and shortly before the beginning of a new effusive activity in Stromboli, a large system of fumaroles activated between the isles of Bottaro and Lisca Bianca, at a depth of around 7-10 metres. This system of fumarole...

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Basement part of the apse, consisting of an elevated, semi-cylindrical structure, often ending with a dome or semi-dome and sometimes covered with a wooden roof....

The porphyry rota was made of a round slab of porphyry, a noble material attributed to royalty, decorated at the edges with precious inserts and set in the floor of a reception hall. It was where a high-ranking individual would be placed. In the Roman Empire it was destined for emperors, then borro...

The Pannonian cap (pileus pannonicus) is a round-shaped cap used by the Roman army as early as the 3rd century AD, though it originates from Persia or the western part of the Balkan peninsula. It was widely used for its simple shape and was sewn using wool, felt, leather or coarse fabrics. It was a...

Imperial estates were the vast territories, subject to the power of Rome following the various campaigns for conquest that extended the borders of the Empire, including almost all of present-day Europe, North Africa and Asia Minor. In imperial times, there was maximum expansion, leading Diocletian ...