Cagli's venerable history goes back to pre-Roman times when it was known as Cale. Notable archeological finds
have shown that the Umbri, Etruscans and Celtic Galli Senoni all passed through before ancient Rome conquered the area in 295 BC at the battle of Sentino.References to Cale Vicus and
Mutatio ad Cale from ancient Roman sources bear witness to Cagli's establishment as a growing centre in the wake of the construction of the Via Flaminia, one of Rome's earliest and most important roads.
Already by the 4thC Cagli was a bishopric under Greciano who took part in the Council of Rimini in 359. After the fall of the Roman Empire, the town fell first to the Goths then
to the Lombards. As a strategic point in the corridor still under Byzantine influence, it was fought over for years by Byzantium and Lombards. The local population menwhile
took refuge in the hill above the Via Flaminia known as the Bandirola; here they founded the Medieval city and enclosed it with sturdy walls.
At the close of the 12thC the town gained its status as a comune thanks to a pact between the Church and local nobility. The warring between Guelfs and Ghibellines that
swept central Italy in Medieval times did not spare Cagli and in 1287, during a heated confrontation between the two factions, it was destroyed by fire.
Two years later in 1289, under orders of Pope Nicholas IV, it was re-sited and rebuilt on classical lines on the plain below where it stands today.
After a chequered history, the town came into the hands of the Dukes of Montefeltro in Urbino around 1376. In the course of the 16thC it then passed to the Della Rovere
family. It remained with them until 1631 when it became part of the Papal States where it stayed until the Unification of Italy in 1860.
text by Ermes Maidani & Giovanni Giovanelli
