Luceria is an ancient city in the northern Apennines, located in the comune of Canossa in the Province of Reggio Emilia, on the right bank of the river Enza.

[1] The Egyptian astronomer and mathematician Claudius Ptolemy (85-165 AD) describes the position of the city with great precision in his Geographia,[2] indicating the latitude and longitude according to the system he invented, but he calls it Nuceria.

It was located in Gallia Cispadana, at the meeting point of three important communication routes: the old road which travelled from the river Po along the right bank of the river Enza to the south where it crossed the Apennines to Tuscia; the foothill track which connected the western zone to the east; and the mountain track which led up towards the hills where the Medieval castle would later be built.

The first inhabitants of the place were the Ligurians, probably the Friniati,[4] who developed close ties with the neighbouring Etruscans of Servirola (modern San Polo d'Enza), after some initial hostility.

In the 2nd century BC, the Roman Republic colonised the Po Valley and became very interested in the nodal points of the various territories for both economic and military reasons.

They settled at Luceria, leading to the development of a mixed population and the transformation of what had been just an open-air market into a proper town with houses, public buildings, paved roads, sidewalks and services for travellers, like accommodation for livestock with running water and warehouses for storing goods.

After Luceria was abandoned, it was repeatedly spoliated, as common in the Middle Ages, for valuable building materials to be reused in new constructions (the place was called Predàro until the 18th century).[7]).

Many authors mentioned Luceria, with varying degrees of specificness, in their works, like Raffaele Maffei da Volterra in his Commentari Urbani[8] from the early 1500s; friar Leandro Alberti in his Descrittione di tutta l'Italia of 1577[9][note 2] and Paul van Merle in his Cosmographia published in Amsterdam in 1605.

The long gaps between excavations led to the destruction of the built structures which were brought to light[11] and the loss of many important artefacts which were sold or reused by the local population.

In later excavations also, the discovery of large numbers of coins is reported, but these were not recorded in detail, meaning that the precious information that they could have offered about the chronology of the city has been lost.

[note 5] This drew the attention of scholar-priest don Gaetano Chierici, one of the fathers of Italian prehistoric studies, and he began new excavations on the site on 9 September 1862.

They also revealed foundations of houses next to it; a four-metre-tall stone column on a cone-shaped base, which was probably part of a building facade; pavements; and numerous tombs, both inhumations and cremations.

Some of these tombs in addition to the usual contents, contained twisted and broken swords and jewelry – part of an ancient funerary ritual of the Ligurians.

During the construction of a local railway in 1909, further Roman Imperial coins were discovered, as well as a 30 centimetre long stone hatchet indicating the presence of prehistoric humans in the area,[note 6] and further tombs.