Spoleto historical timeline

Spoleto's history is unusually legible, because each phase left a building that is still standing and still in use.

1. 10th century BC — founded by the Umbri, the people who gave the region its name.
2. 241 BC — becomes a Roman colony. The Teatro Romano, the Arco di Druso and Casa Romana survive from the Roman city, and the theatre is still used for performance.
3. late 4th to early 5th century AD — San Salvatore is built, an early Christian church that reused Roman material. It is now part of the UNESCO inscription Longobards in Italy: Places of Power (568–774 A.D.), added in 2011.
4. 576 — Faroald I makes Spoleto the seat of the Duchy of Spoleto. The duchy governs much of central Italy and outlasts the Lombard kingdom itself; this is the period that made Spoleto a capital.
5. 1155 — Frederick Barbarossa destroys and burns the city.
6. 1198 — Pope Innocent III consecrates the rebuilt cathedral. The frescoes inside it eventually include contributions from Filippo Lippi and his workshop.
7. 1218 — Francis of Assisi is given the small chapel of Santa Caterina on Monteluco by its Benedictine monks, founding the hermitage there.
8. 1353 — Cardinal Albornoz begins the restoration of papal authority, and with it the fortress that bears his name. The Ponte delle Torri reaches its present form by the end of the 14th century, the detailing pointing to the work after 1363 and to Albornoz's architect Matteo Gattaponi.
9. 1817–1982 — the Rocca serves as a prison, having earlier been a papal residence. It closes as a prison within living memory and reopens as the national museum of the Duchy.
10. 1860 — Spoleto is annexed to the Kingdom of Italy.
11. 5 June 1958 — the first Festival dei Due Mondi opens, two years after Gian Carlo Menotti confirmed Spoleto as its seat. The Verdi Requiem is staged in the cathedral square in 1959; Luca Ronconi's Orlando Furioso has its première here in 1969; Visconti stages Manon Lescaut in 1973; the Roman theatre opens to the Festival on 5 July 1974; an American sister festival begins in Charleston in 1977; and the Rocca comes into Festival use from 1982.
12. August 2016 — after the central Italian earthquake, the Ponte delle Torri is closed to pedestrians as a precaution by municipal ordinance. Its access has been governed by ordinance since; check before planning a walk across it.