Luceria probably arose as a mercantile centre in the 4th century BC. It was located in
Gallia Cispadana, at the meeting point of three important communication routes: the old road which travelled from the river
Po along the right bank of the river Enza to the south where it crossed the
Apennines to
Tuscia; the foothill track which connected the western zone to the east; and the mountain track which led up towards the hills where the medieval castle would later be built. The first inhabitants of the place were the
Ligurians, probably the Friniati, who developed close ties with the neighbouring
Etruscans of
Servirola (modern San Polo d'Enza), after some initial hostility. They took advantage of the strategic position of their settlement to trade with settlements which were further afield too. In the 2nd century BC, the
Roman Republic colonised the
Po Valley and became very interested in the nodal points of the various territories for both economic and military reasons. They settled at Luceria, leading to the development of a mixed population and the transformation of what had been just an open-air market into a proper town with houses, public buildings, paved roads, sidewalks and services for travellers, like accommodation for livestock with running water and warehouses for storing goods. The customs and traditions of the Ligurians did not disappear and the Romans did not impose their own culture. Instead, Roman culture merged with the native one slowly, probably accompanied by cross-cultural marriages. The
Romanisation of Luceria dates to the Republican era, but the city actually became important later on, in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD, under the
Roman Empire. At this time there were small neighbouring villages south of the
rio Vico, which still exist today, such as
Vico (Latin for "village"),
Taverne (from the Latin
Tabernae) and
Carbonizzo (from
carbonescere, "to collect charcoal"). Traces of a vast fire which destroyed all the wooden structures in the city date to this period. They were replaced with brick buildings on strong stone foundations. Thereafter Luceria expanded to its maximum size, occupying around 100,000 m2, bordered on the north by the
Rio Luceria and to the south by the
Rio Vico and crossed diagonally by a major paved street, which reaches up to 6 metres in width. Luceria is also mentioned in a letter written by the Emperor
Valentinian I to his prefect
Rufinus about grazing rights, which ends (23 September 365). Subsequently, the city of Luceria was suddenly abandoned for unknown reasons. Although these years were hard for the Empire, the battles which took place on the frontiers probably could not have drastically affected an economically prosperous settlement in the interior, like Luceria. But it cannot be ruled out that the settlement was attacked by soldiers or deserters in search of food. A catastrophic natural disaster has found more support. This is deduced from the many coins which have been found through excavation and random finds during
tillage over the centuries. A particularly strong earthquake or flood could have caused the inhabitants to flee, abandoning all their possessions, treasures and plate. After such disastrous events it was very easy for the survivors to move back and reconstruct what had been destroyed. Apparently economic activity had also declined and commercial traffic probably declined ever more, impoverishing the area. After Luceria was abandoned, it was repeatedly spoliated, as common in the Middle Ages, for valuable building materials to be reused in new constructions (the place was called
Predàro until the 18th century).). Thus the settlement disappeared from view and, in time, from local memory too. Interest in this lost city revived during the
Renaissance when the work of Ptolemy was rediscovered and published. Many authors mentioned Luceria, with varying degrees of specificness, in their works, like
Raffaele Maffei da Volterra in his
Commentari Urbani from the early 1500s;
friar Leandro Alberti in his ''Descrittione di tutta l'Italia
of 1577 and Paul van Merle in his Cosmographia'' published in
Amsterdam in 1605. Scholars like
Johann Jacob Hofmann (1698) and
Ludovico Antonio Muratori (1744) thought that Luceria was ancient
Luzzara, which is usually considered to have been founded by the
Lombards, although recently Roman and pre-Roman remains have been discovered in the apse of the Church of San Giorgio, which make the equation more plausible. == Excavations ==