[5] Laid out within medieval walls on a hill in the wide valley of the Aterno river, it is surrounded by the Apennine Mountains, with the Gran Sasso d'Italia to the north-east.

L'Aquila sits upon a hillside in the middle of a narrow valley; tall snow-capped mountains of the Gran Sasso massif flank the town.

The mountains block the city off from warm humid air currents from the Mediterranean, and give rise to a climate that is cool in comparison to most of central Italy, and dry.

The city's construction was begun by Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Sicily, out of several already existing villages (ninety-nine, according to local tradition; see Amiternum), as a bulwark against the power of the papacy.

From its beginnings the city constituted an important market for the surrounding countryside, which provided it with a regular supply of food: from the fertile valleys came the precious saffron; the surrounding mountain pastures provided summer grazing for numerous transhumant flocks of sheep, which in turn supplied abundant raw materials for export and, to a lesser extent, small local industries, which in time brought craftsmen and merchants from outside the area.

Negotiations for the succession of Edmund, son of Henry III of England, to the throne of the Kingdom of Sicily involved L'Aquila in the web of interests linking the Roman Curia to the English court.

On 23 December 1256 Pope Alexander IV elevated the churches of Saints Massimo and Giorgio to the status of cathedrals as a reward to the citizens of L'Aquila for their opposition to King Manfred who, in July 1259, had the city razed to the ground in an attempt to destroy the negotiations.

On 29 August 1294 the hermit Pietro del Morrone was consecrated as pope Celestine V in the church of Santa Maria di Collemaggio, in commemoration of which the new pope decreed the annual religious rite of the Pardon (nowadays known as Celestinian Forgiveness, Perdonanza Celestiniana), still observed today in the city on 28 and 29 August: it is the immediate ancestor of the Jubilee Year.

Hence the conditions for radical political renewal: in 1355 the trade guilds of leather-workers, metal-workers, merchants and learned men were brought into the government of the city, and these together with the Camerario and the Cinque constituted the new Camera Aquilana.

The construction work was long and difficult, mainly because of the earthquake of 1461, which caused the buildings to collapse, and the translation of the body of San Bernardino did not take place until 14 May 1472.

When the Pope excommunicated Joanna II, Queen of Naples, appointing Louis III of Anjou as heir to the crown in her stead, L'Aquila sided with the Angevines.

In exchange for his services, Braccio obtained the lordship of Teramo, as well as the fiefdoms of Capua and Foggia: he started a 13-month-long siege of L'Aquila, that resisted bravely.

In October 2003, however, a liberal judge in l'Aquila ordered the small town of Ofena to remove a crucifix from its elementary school so as not to offend the religious sensibilities of two young Muslim students.

Earthquakes mark the history of L'Aquila, as the city is partly built on an ancient lake-bed which amplifies seismic activity.

More than 3,000 people died and almost all the churches collapsed; Rocca Calascio, the highest fortress in Europe was also ruined by this event, yet the town survived.

Because of the 2009 earthquake, the Berlusconi government decided to move that year's G8 summit from its scheduled Sardinian host of La Maddalena to L'Aquila, so that disaster funds would be distributed to the affected region and to show solidarity with the city's inhabitants.

Although less than an hour-and-a-half drive from Rome, and popular with Romans for summer hiking and winter skiing in surrounding mountains, the city is sparsely visited by tourists.

Among the sights are: Also nearby are several ski resorts like Gran Sasso d'Italia, the highest of the Apennines where in its valley the movie The Name of the Rose was filmed in the end of the 1980s.

As a work of Lucci, in 1981 saw the establishment of l'Istituto Cinematografico dell'Aquila, an institute for the production and diffusion of the cinematographic culture in Italia and abroad.

L'Aquila, AbruzzoAosta, Aosta ValleyBari, ApuliaPotenza, Basilicata Catanzaro, CalabriaNaples, CampaniaBologna, Emilia-RomagnaTrieste, Friuli-Venezia Giulia Rome, LazioGenoa, LiguriaMilan, LombardyAncona, Marche Campobasso, MoliseTurin, PiedmontCagliari, SardiniaPalermo, Sicily Trento, Trentino-Alto Adige/SüdtirolFlorence, TuscanyPerugia, UmbriaVenice, Veneto