Frosolone: The Village Where Blades Rival Sheffield and Toledo

"The best razors in London were those imported from Frosolone, whose name rivals that of Toledo and Sheffield." Benedetto Croce wrote this at the beginning of the twentieth century, and at the time it was almost a commonplace: in Frosolone, a small village in the Molisan hinterland at 927 metres, the art of the blade was as everyday as bread.

A tradition that stretches back

The origins of Frosolone's cutlery trade are lost among the Lombards and medieval workshops, but the real turning point came in 1750, when an edict by Charles III of Bourbon banned the manufacture of edged weapons. The masters of iron — until then among the leading producers of swords and arms in southern Italy — converted their workshops to kitchen knives, shears, razors, scissors, and penknives. The result was a civilian excellence that lasted centuries: until the 1960s, every alley in the historic centre housed at least one workshop, and the ring of hammers on anvils was the soundtrack of dawn.

Workshops and craftsmen today

Of the over eighty workshops active in the twentieth century, only a few remain, but some are tenacious: Rocco Petrunti, Dolcimascolo, and other craftsmen still work with traditional methods, producing blades from raw steel with tempering and grinding techniques passed from father to son. Their cutlery shops open onto the historic centre and can be visited: watching a knife being born from iron is a rare artisanal spectacle in Italy.

The fair and the village

Every August Frosolone hosts the Scissors and Knives Market Exhibition, which draws craftsmen and enthusiasts from all over Italy. The historic centre, with its limestone lanes and the parish church of Sant'Angelo, is worth the detour on its own. The surrounding landscape, on the slopes of the Mainarde, is the most authentic Molisan Apennine: beech forests, pastures, and silence. Distance from Campobasso: about 50 kilometres.