Identity: Interamna, Saint Valentine, the "Italian Manchester"

History

Interamna Nahars, a Roman municipium from the third century BC, gained a theatre, an amphitheatre and at least two bath complexes in the first century AD; the regional tourism portal names Emperor Marcus Claudius Tacitus and the historian Cornelius Tacitus as natives. Taken by the Goths, Byzantines and Lombards and destroyed by Barbarossa in 1174, it passed to the Papal States in 1420 and remained there until Italian unification.

From 1832 the city pulled down its walls and industrialised; in 1884 the Società degli Alti Forni, Fonderie ed Acciaierie di Terni was founded, to a plan by Benedetto Brin with Vincenzo Stefano Breda. The Great Hydraulic Press in front of the station, used in the steelworks from 1935 to 1993, is now on public display; the closure of the Centurini jute mill (1970) and the Papigno power plant (1973) ended part of that history.

Saint Valentine

The patron saint is Valentine, who lived in Terni in the third century and is known worldwide as the protector of lovers: his relics are in the basilica dedicated to him, a pilgrimage site especially in February, when the city holds love-themed events.