Comune Di Rapone

Beautiful park for children

Of very ancient origin, it has evidence of settlements since the Paleolithic. Probably founded by the inhabitants of "Rapone vecchio" situated above the Serra delle Pietre on the right of the Ofanto, from there they moved because of the consequences of the Greek-Gothic war that lasted until the year in the northern area of ​​the Basilicata and the inner Ofanto. 555. The historian Racioppi considers the Byzantine toponym; however there are those who consider it in the precise sense of a new inhabited area born of fatigue and misfortune, from the Greek "RA-PONO". The new settlement was then indicated in the ancient Norman-Angevin papers. Under the Normans, William I and William II, and until 1169, Rapone belonged, as a suffeudo not yet assigned, to the county of Conza, while in the Swabian period it was included with the of the hamlet of San Tommaso di Ruvo, of Bella and of Pierno , among those commissioned by Frederick II to provide for the repair of the castle of San Fele, after the death in Foggia of the emperor's third wife, Isabella of England in 1241. The feud of Rapone as almost all the feuds and lands of internal basin of the Ofanto, it was also involved in the facts of the Ghibelline insurrection of 1268 against the Angevins in favor of the Swabians. In fact, as a result of these events, Charles I of Anjou assigned it in 1271 to the new lord in the person of the French Herveo de Chevreuse together with Rapolla, Cisterna and Pitrapalomba. The feud of Rapone passed to Signora Altruda di Dragone, who had married Giovanni Gaulart with a marriage celebrated in Foggia in the presence of her brother-in-law Guglielmo Gaulart di Piès and the same sovereign of Naples. With the typical feudal system of the past centuries, Rapone passed into the hands of various families: the Pipino, the Sanseverino, the Ruffo d'Alemagna and the Sinerchia family who held it, together with Castelgrande and the fief of Sant'Andrea, up to the confiscation occurred following the participation in the Conspiracy of the Barons concocted in the castle of Miglionico in 1485. Later it passed to the Carafa, who sold it to the D'Anna who governed it until the abolition of feudality in 1806.