Introduction to the city of Isernia

A quiet street in Isernia

Isernia realizes the idea of a sleepy, small, southern Italian town with plenty of narrow orange-hued streets ready to be photographed at every angle. You will want to take a leisurely stroll around the streets, and take it all in. As the focal point in the picture at right, you can see the arch and bell tower of the Duomo di Isernia (also known as the Cattedrale di San Pietro Apostolo). Construction began in the 14th century, although much of the church has been reconstructed after earthquakes throughout the centuries.

Isernia also has ancient historical treasures to explore. I would be disingenuous if I said that I visited these places (though now I intend to) but I point you towards an authority on the classics and a scholar that I have admired for years, Professor Mary Beard. She recommends The Paleolithic Museum. In her popular and refreshingly personal blog called A Don’s Life, Professor Beard explains that “In the late 1970s when a new autostrada was being built in Molise, a vast deposit of prehistoric bones and flints was discovered, dating back 700,000 years. They were not humans (though, since than a child’s tooth — the oldest known Italian — has been discovered), but an array of animals that had once roamed Italy.” Read her full post on the museum here. Another ancient site in the province of Isernia is the Samnite site of Pietrabbondante; the samnites were an ancient ethnic group that lost to the Romans during the Republic. Here you can see an ancient theatre.

Mary Beard has a subsequent post titled ‘The Delights of Isernia’ and I echo the sentiment that if you are looking for a tourist free area, Molise is a good region to explore. My main attraction in the city, I must admit, was a truly excellent restaurant named Existo Osteria.  Read more about the goods in this post. You might have noticed that the name also fits perfectly into my narrative about this region. I love the rather ironic allusion to the existence joke (‘existo’ means ‘I exist’ in Italian). In line with the name of this restaurant there is also a more prominent slogan gaining speed with a younger generation which is ‘Molise Resiste’. I think it can be read in two ways, resiste literally means ‘it resists’; thus, the region ‘resists’ this criticism and degradation. It also kind of relates to rebirth, as it ‘re’ exists due to a younger generation that has lived their whole lives (post-1970) which the region in existence. This is an article (albeit in Italian) written by a young woman from Molise (una molisiana) defending her region in one of Italy’s biggest newspapers, The Corriere Della Sera.