Tricarico is a town and comune in the province of Matera, Basilicata, southern Italy. It is home to one of the best preserved medieval histor…Tricarico is a town and comune in the province of Matera, Basilicata, southern Italy. It is home to one of the best preserved medieval historical centres in Lucania. The origin of the name Tricarico is unknown. It might derive from the Greek treis and cara. That is "having three heads". According to a slightly different hypothesis, it could have originally been Triacricon, deriving from the Greek words tria/treis and acron/acra, which during Antiquity and Early Middle Ages meant both an "apex/summit", and a "citadel", with Triacricon thus meaning a city made by connecting "three citadels". These three acra/citadels were no other than the site of the 9th c Arabic castle of Saracena in the north, the site of a 9th-10th c Byzantine Rocca fortificata in the south, improved during the 11th-12th c by the Normans, and then, during the 13th c, by the Hohenstaufen, and also the site of the 14th c Palazzo Ducale in the middle. Probably the three sites were simultaneously fortified even before the successive occupations.
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