Carsoli

The old city is not where the town is. Carsioli stood on the via Tiburtina Valeria, 63 kilometres from Rome and three west of the present village, at a place called Civita: taken by the Romans at the end of the fourth century BC, it was, together with Alba Fucens, a fortified outpost in the land of the Aequi against the Marsi, and the name comes from a pre-Latin root meaning rock. Ovid, Livy and Strabo all mention it; and it is Ovid, in the fourth book of the Fasti, who tells of a legendary episode that happened here and was followed by the institution of the fox race at the Cerealia games in Rome.

Then the name moved. Between the tenth and the eleventh centuries the place was also called Sala, by concession of the abbey of Subiaco, and in 993 count Rainaldo of the Marsi chose to live here and gave the monastery lands and churches, among them Santa Maria in Cellis. In that same church, in 1048, count Attone set up a diocese of his own out of rivalry with his relatives: the schism lasted until 1057, when the Roman synod recognised Pandolfo as the sole bishop of the Marsi. The settlement growing meanwhile below the castle on colle Sant'Angelo was called Celle Carsolarum, or simply Celle; the name of the Roman city, abandoned three kilometres away, would come back to the hill only later.