Larino

Larino sits in the lower Biferno valley, twenty kilometers inland from Termoli. The Frentani held the place before Rome and minted bronze coins here in the third century BC; the wool trade made it a regional centre. The orator Cicero defended a Larino-born equestrian, Aulus Cluentius Habitus, in his Pro Cluentio of 66 BC, a case that ties the town to the wider world of the capital beyond its own remains.

The old town runs along the ridge above the ancient city, so the medieval borgo and the old street plan sit in view of each other rather than layered one on top of the other. The cathedral stands at one end of this arrangement, the arena and forum fragments at the level below. Every 25 to 27 May the streets carry the Carrese di San Pardo, a three-day procession of oxen and flower-decked carts that retraces the eleventh-century translation of the patron's relics from Daunia, linking the medieval town's religious life to the same ground the Frentani and the arena's builders had already used.

The surrounding hills carry the Città dell'Olio mark. What holds the town together, across the Frentani coinage, the law case, the arena, and the May procession, is that each layer used the same ridge and valley without erasing what came before it.