Arquà Petrarca historical timeline

Arquà is a village that a poet made famous by choosing to die in it, and that eventually took his name.

1. Bronze Age Human presence in Arquà dates from this period, according to excavations carried out between the later 19th century and the first decades of the 20th.
2. Roman period The legacy survives in the place names — Bignago from Bennius, Mercurana from Mercurius — and in grave goods, imperial coins and sewage lines.
3. 1370–1374 Petrarch lives the last four years of his life here. He dies on 19 July 1374, the day before his seventieth birthday.
4. 1870 The town adds the poet's name to its own and becomes Arquà Petrarca.
5. 1976–1977 The German international Petrarca-Preis is awarded in his former residence.
6. 2004 The 700th anniversary of Petrarch's birth is marked here and in nearby Padua.
7. 2011 The Laghetto della Costa, within the comune, is inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list as part of the Prehistoric Pile Dwellings around the Alps.