Piperno
PIPERNO (anc. Privernum), a. town of the province of Rome, Italy, 61 m. S.E. of Rome by rail. Pop. (1901), 6736. The medieval town was founded in the 1cth century (?) on a hill 490 ft. above sea-level, by refugees from the Roman town of Privernum, lower down (118 ft. above sea-level) on the highroad, ij m. to the north, at the mouth of a low pass leading through the Volscian mountains to the valley of the Sacco. Here are remains of an arch crossing the road and other ruins (mostly buried) of the Roman period; but the remains above ground are largely medieval. It is improbable, however, that the ancient Volscian town should have occupied so easily accessible a site; it is not unlikely that it stood on the site occupied by the medieval and modern town, but there is no proof of this. Privernum was a Volscian town, and took up arms against Rome after the foundation of a Latin colony at Setia in 382 B.C. It was finally captured in 329 B.C., and eleven years later the tribus Oufentina was founded, taking its name from the river Oufens (mod. Uffente) in the territory of Privernum. Little is known of it subsequently. The medieval town has a picturesque piazza, with a Gothic cathedral (1283), which preserves a fine porch, though the interior was modernized in 1782; a Gothic palazzo pubblico; and other Gothic churches exist in the town. Polygonal terrace walls of the Roman or pre-Roman period exist at various places in the vicinity (G. B. Giovenale and L. Mariani in Notizie degli Scan, 1899,88). (T.As.)
Note - this article incorporates content from Encyclopaedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, (1910-1911)
