The town sits in a narrow place, and may have taken its name from it: one of the guesses is the Latin capistrum, a halter, from its position at the mouth of the Valle Roveto. The other two are capisterium, the tray for winnowing grain, and the one the comune put on its coat of arms, Caput Castrorum, head of the camps. Either way, the narrows made the place: in the twelfth century Capistrello was the seat of the collector of the toll on the pass, because through here ran the only road that in the Middle Ages linked the Marsica with Naples, by way of Sora and Cassino.
Here too is the outlet of Claudius's emissary, the tunnel dug between 41 and 52 to carry the water of Lake Fucino into the river Liri and drain the basin: eleven years of work and some twenty-five thousand slaves, for one of the greatest works of hydraulic engineering ever built. Once the empire fell, though, nobody kept it up: the channel silted shut, probably helped by the earthquake of 508, and the lake came back to its old level. It took no war to undo the greatest piece of Roman hydraulic engineering: it was enough to stop looking after it.
No events match these filters.
📅 Every year, on 13 June; summer brings the strawberry feast on the Renga plateau
Capistrello celebrates Saint Anthony of Padua on 13 June, in the church dedicated to him. In summer, the strawberry feast is held on the Renga plateau.
Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Outside Capistrello, but an easy day trip away.
