Tricarico
comune in Basilicata, Italy
Tricarico (Lucano: Trëcàrëchë IPA: [trəˈkæːrəkə]; Greek: Τριακρικόν, romanized: Triakrikon) is a town and comune in the province of Matera, Basilicata, southern Italy.
It is home to one of the best preserved medieval historical centres in Lucania.
Etymology
The origin of the name Tricarico is unknown. It might derive from the Greek τρία treis ("three") and cara (head/skull in Hellenistic-era Greek: η κάρα, τό κάρα, η κάρη). That is "having three heads". According to a slightly different hypothesis, it could have originally been Triacricon, deriving from the Greek words tria/treis and acron/acra, which during Antiquity and Early Middle Ages meant both an "apex/summit", and a "citadel", with Triacricon thus meaning a city made by connecting "three citadels". These three acra/citadels were no other than the site of the 9th c Arabic castle of Saracena in the north, the site of a 9th-10th c Byzantine Rocca fortificata in the south, improved during the 11th-12th c by the Normans, and then, during the 13th c, by the Hohenstaufen, and also the site of the 14th c Palazzo Ducale in the middle. Probably the three sites were simultaneously fortified even before the successive occupations.
History
Although of ancient origin, the first news documented about the town dates to 849, when it was a Lombard county included in the gastaldate of Salerno. Later (9th century - late 10th century) it was an Arab stronghold.
The public source identifies “Tricarico” as comune in Basilicata, Italy. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Tricarico, comune and Basilicata.
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This entry incorporates text from “Tricarico” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.