Fermo

Fermo [ˈfermo]  listen  (ancient: Firmum Picenum) is a town and comune of the Marche, Italy, in the Province of Fermo.

Fermo is on a hill, the Sabulo, elevation 319 metres (1,047 ft), on a branch from Porto San Giorgio on the Adriatic coast railway.

History

The oldest human remains from the area are funerary remains from the 9th-8th centuries BC, belonging to the Villanovan culture or the proto-Etruscan civilization.

The ancient Firmum Picenum was founded as a Latin colony, consisting of 6000 men, in 264 BC, after the conquest of the Picentes, as the local headquarters of the Roman power, to which it remained faithful. It was originally governed by five quaestors. It was made a colony with full rights after the battle of Philippi, the 4th Legion being settled there. It lay at the junction of roads to Pausulae, Urbs Salvia, and Asculum, connected to the coast road by a short branch road from Castellum Firmanum (Porto S. Giorgio).

With the Pentapolis, in the 8th century it passed under the authority of the Holy See was thenceforth subject to the vicissitudes of the March of Ancona. In the 10th century it became the capital of the Marchia Firmana. Under the predecessors of Honorius III (1216–27) the bishops of city became prince-bishops, first with the secular rights of counts, and later as princes of Fermo.