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HISTORY OF L'AQUILA
The city was founded by the emperor Frederick II of Swabia in about 1230 and given the name of Aquila, which was changed to Aquila degli Abruzzi in 1861 and L'Aquila in 1939.
It is an unusual city, the only one in medieval Italy founded according to a specific plan with a harmonious design, unprecedented in the history of urban architecture (a similar case was the birth of St. Petersburg, in 1703). It consisted of the union of many villages in the area (99, according to legend), each of which constituted a quarter that remained tied to and was considered part of the mother village for about a century. In the new city, the citizens of the castles inside the city walls and those who remained in the original castles had the same civil rights and rights to use common property, such as pastures and woods.
The 99 spouts of L'Aquila's fountain represent these 99 villages, symbolizing the civic union and the sense of belonging to the history and culture of their city shared by all the people of L'Aquila.
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