Aquila

Sheep and saffron made the new city rich. In 1311 King Robert of Anjou freed the Abruzzo flocks from customs duties, Tuscan merchants settled in the city, and in 1344 the king gave it a mint of its own. The earthquake of 1349 tested the bond between the city and its founding villages: about 800 people died, and so many survivors wanted to go home to the countryside that the governor had the gates barred with heavy timbers to keep L'Aquila from emptying.

The city's pride showed in 1423, when Braccio da Montone laid siege to it for siding with the Angevins. L'Aquila held out for thirteen months, and in June 1424 Braccio was mortally wounded in the battle beneath its walls and died a prisoner inside them. Bernardino of Siena died here twenty years later, and the basilica begun in 1454 to hold his body grew into the grandest Renaissance church in the city. Earthquakes kept returning, and the one of 1703 killed more than 3,000 people and brought down almost every church; Pope Clement XI had to arrange for the city to be repopulated.