You can't go far round Penne without coming across references to the Vestini. These were the people who lived in this area of Abruzzo before the Romans built their empire. Penne was their walled capital, and the statue of one of their kings, Nevio Pompuledio, has become the modern symbol of the whole Abruzzo region.
The Vestini were a civilized people, literate, with their own currency. When the Romans arrived they fought back with the other peoples of the area; defeated in 304 BC, they became Roman allies, providing Rome with an army of 20,000 foot soldiers and 4,000 cavalry.
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The name Penne meant 'hills', and Penne is built across 4 hills symbolized by the four towers in the town coat of arms: Colle Sacro, which has always held the main temple and now the cathedral; Colle Castello, the second hill inside the walls; and Colle Romano and Colle Cappuccio, the two hills outside the walls.
Under Roman rule for the next 200 years they were subjects but not citizens, and in 91BC they rose up against Rome with the other conquered peoples of Italy to demand full Roman citizenship. Defeated once again they switched sides, and were rewarded with what they had asked for: Roman citizenship and honorary membership of one of the tribes of Rome. From now on Penne was a Roman town.
Roman Penne blossomed as an administrative and religious centre. Penne had its own senate. The old temple to the goddess of the Vestini, Vesta, was expanded, and new temples built to Juno, Venus and Ceres. Caligula had a temple built to his deified sister, Drusilla. Penne became a spa town with its own public baths (Penne spring water was believed to be good for the bowels), a holiday resort famous for its greenery, and an exporter of luxury cheese to Rome. As the town expanded beyond its old walls, Colle Romano was built over with luxury villas with decorative gardens. Roman Penne flourished for nearly 400 years.
But as the Roman empire went into decline, disaster struck. In 346 AD a major earthquake wiped out the villas on Colle Romano and most of Colle Castello. The town struggled to recover as the fabric of the empire disintegrated around it. The earthquake was followed by a devastating war with the Goths, plague, and finally conquest by the Germanic Langobards. Much of the population drifted out to the countryside and subsistence farming. The survivors huddled together round the temple of Vesta on Colle Sacro in mud and wood houses. The remains of the Roman monuments were gradually torn down and carted away for building materials.
The last modern remnant of the Vestini as a political entity is the Vestini Mountain Community, a group of 14 small towns and villages with headquarters in Penne
Eventually nothing was left of the old public buildings except the temple of Vesta. And when in 837 AD the Franks under Charlemagne replaced the Langobards, even the temple of Vesta had to go - the Christian cathedral was built on top of it. The stunning crypt of this first cathedral still remains, with access through the cathedral museum - the oldest surviving building in Penne.