Our History
Grand Hotel Vigna Nocelli is located on a road that has been the most important artery of the Daunia since Roman times: the Appia Traiana. This is the construction of the first military road built by the Romans in 312 BC, definitively settled and declared public in 109 by the emperor Trajan from which it was named after. It became the main artery through which Rome firmly assured the dominion of Campania and determined a greater economic vitality to the cities placed along its path.
Immediately after the construction of the Appia Traiana, others followed: La Flaminia, La Valeria, La Cassia, L'Aurelia. These roads were not used exclusively for military purposes, but also to develop a secure and rapid communication system that had its full development in this period.
In the Middle Ages, since the needs tied to the trade started diminishing, the roads were used above all for PILGRIMAGES, a phenomenon that spread rapidly during this period. We know for sure that the most frequented route since the days of pilgrimages is the Via Francigena, an obligatory itinerary for the Pilgrims who wanted to go to Rome. The location of the Grand Hotel Vigna Nocelli is on the Traiana diverticulum that led from Aecae to the ancient Sipontum, a stretch of the Franciscan road that became known in the 12th century near the Candelaro as (Strata Preregrinorum), as a place of passage required for pilgrims and penitents on their way to and from the Holy Land
The time of construction of Vigna Nocelli would seem to refer to the XIII-XIV centuries, that is to say the moment in which also in Italy the gothic forms shaped in the French region of the Ile de France began to spread. The most important and innovative event for the affirmation of new Gothic trends in southern Italy, was the great artistic and cultural movement that grew in the Swabian age and also spread to northern Italy, especially in Tuscany, where the Gothic was. subjected to a decided re-elaboration.
Externally, the façade of the building of Grand Hotel Vigna Nocelli is divided into three parts: the central one, whose vertical impetus vaguely recalls the tricuspidated façade of the Cathedral of Orvieto (1310), and the lateral ones, each comprised of two pilasters crowned by spiers. The outer wall is interrupted by five large portals, three seats in the central area and two in the side ones, and by the string course that divides the building horizontally; the upper part of the facade has a circular motif in the center. The decorative motifs of the building are given by elaborate vegetable and floral decorations harmoniously inscribed within the pointed arches that, in addition to giving greater impetus to the architectural organism, refer to the ogival arches that adorn the Italian duo-fourteenth-century works.
Structurally the building is made of solid load-bearing masonry, the thickness of the walls is 95 centimeters and does not seem to be of the dry type but rather made of bricks and stones, as it appears, following the deterioration of the plaster, both from outside and inside; while the vaults described are made of bricks