The earliest human presence in the area of Ascoli Satriano dates from around the 9th century BC, according to archaeological evidence, and similar dated earthworks are common in the area. Ascoli Satriano was a city of the Dauni. It was then a small cluster of habitations in a wider network of scattered villas. The economy was operated byslave labour and focused on grain cultivation. Ascoli Satriano was the site of two early Roman battles. Later Sulla established a military colony there. As the Western Roman Empire began to collapse in the fourth and fifth centuries, many of the surrounding farms were abandoned with a retraction of cultivation and a re-growth of woodlands. In the mid-9th century the Saracens razed the city. In 1040 it rebelled against the Byzantines and, the following year, a decisive battle was fought nearby which granted the Normans control over southern Italy. An earthquake in 1456 totally destroyed Ascoli Satriano, and forced relocation of the surviving inhabitants to the site of the current town. Re-growth of the town however was interrupted by periodic outbreaks of plague and typhus into the early 19th Century. From the end of the nineteenth century the Ascoli Satriano was affected by increasing emigration to the Americas, reaching a peak between 1903 and 1914, stopping during the periods of the First World War and Italian fascism. After the bombing of Foggia in 1943, Ascoli Satriano was freed by British and American forces. Ascoli Satriano was mentioned by the Irish writer James Joyce in his novel Ulysses. After the Second World War, Ascoli Satriano, close to Cerignola, was the center of significant labor struggles against landlordism, sharecropping and low wages, and strikes, demonstrations and land occupations became frequent. Trade unionists and politicians made passionate speeches to organize to support the demands of the working classes in Piazza Cecco d'Ascoli.
Main sights
The Romanesque-Gothic Cathedral
Church of St. John the Baptist
Church of the Incoronata
The Museum Center of Ascoli Satriano houses the :it: Marmi di Ascoli Satriano|Marbles of Ascoli Satriano, a set of marble artifacts from the 4th century BCE believed to been taken from a tomb of an elite prince of the region.
