The city of Potenza is the highest of all the Italian regional capitals. It consists in an old center, situated in a dominant position on the left bank of the Basento river, to which, especially in recent decades, new districts have been added both to the north and south, the latter towards the bottom of the valley. The still visible signs of the 1980 earthquake almost symbolize the devastation produced by nature and by man that has marked its long history. However, its role at the junction of major communication routes, including a link road that connects it with the Salerno-Reggio Calabria motorway (A3) indicates and predicts the end of the city's and region's over long isolation.

Potenza's fortune started very probably when the Romans destroyed the major Lucanian center of Serra di Vaglio, approximately 15 km to the north-east, forc­ing the surviving inhabitants to seek refuge in the small village on the site where it stands today. The new settlement grew in importance and is recorded as Potentia, town and seat of the Prefecture registered with the Pomptine tribe. Its prosperity was then stolen by the colony of Grumentum, more strategical for the politics of the late Empire.

In the early 5^th century the city suffered the violent trauma of the sack of Alaric’s Goths; in the following century it became part of the Lombard Duchy of Benevento and then of the Principality of Salerno. In the same period, perhaps already towards the end of the 5^th century, as Christianity spread, it became an Episcopal see. One of its bishops, Gerardo Della Porta (bishop from 1111 to 1119; beatified in 1120 by Pope Calixtus II), became its patron: the cathedral is dedicated to him. In the 10^th century, Potenza had to defend itself against the raiding Saracens who sailed up the Basento (the Sfilata dei Turchi - Parade of the Turks -, held every year in late spring is in memory of this), while the arrival of the Normans in the middle of the 11^th century brought a period of new political prestige as a crown property (directly under the sovereign, with consider­able privileges), which continued with the first Swabian rule, after 1186.

It was, however, neglected by Frederick II, more con­cerned with fortifying northern Basilicata, favoring the Melfi and mount Vulture area. With the arrival of the Angevins, loyalty to the Ghibelline cause and the resulting revolt of the barons cost the city a cruel destruction on the part of Charles of Anjou in 1268; its transformation into a county saw the start of a slow decline, bound to the constant succession of feudatories, over the centuries in which it shared the fate of the Kingdom of Naples. Added to this was its repeated destruction, both for political reasons and seismic instability, with ruinous earthquakes occurring in cycles.

Despite all, the inhabitants of Potenza always recov­ered courageously to start again, maintaining their pride and desire for independence which, in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, resulted in a keen cultural commit­ment to open-minded, enlightened and liberal positions and active participation in the republican rebellions of 1799 and all the events of the Risorgimento.

In 1806 Potenza became a provincial seat and regional capital in the new Napoleonic Basilicata: this experi­ence was not forgotten and drove the town to rebel, first in-the south, then against the Bourbons and to declare annexation to the Kingdom of Italy. In the second half of the 19^th century the effort of the unified state to cre­ate a communications network sought, not always with success, to bring the city and all Basilicata out of hun­dreds of years of isolation, with new roads and the Potenza-Salerno railway, inaugurated in 1880.

In the 1900s Potenza became increasingly important as an economic and industrial pole, especially after the Second World War, following the institution of a spe­cial Consortium for the Industrial Area. Moreover, it had a renewed cultural commitment as the home of the Lucanian University established in 1981. The destruc­tion caused by the war in 1943 and that of the 1980 earthquake called for reconstruction implemented with town planning that had also to consider the huge popu­lation increase, linked to the migration to the towns and domestic immigration.

The new skyscrapers and modem anti-seismic build­ings contrast with the container-village of Bucaletto, created after the last earthquake. But this city's tena­cious desire for rebirth has not weakened and the futur­istic bridge constructed over the Basento can be a sym­bol of the new frontier of contemporary engineering. Arriving from Via Basentana, the first thing you see is this bold creation, conceived in 1969 by the architect Musumeci as a huge piece of crumpled paper support­ing the span of the bridge instead of traditional pylons. The bridge links the city with the industrial area that has developed in the valley bottom.